There was only one reason Pettit would have called me in here, and it was that he thought he’d ID’d the spy. I felt my heart speed up. The black-and-white picture came in clear as the cable TV back home in Anchorage. Sachs went cot to cot, down a row, stopping by each cot, clearly asking each patient, Need anything? Are you okay?
If a guy shook his head, said no, Sachs moved to the next person. If a guy responded, Sachs stayed.
Pettit said, “Like all the volunteers. Bed to bed. Now,” he said, adjusting the picture. “Watch Del Grazo.”
I saw the lieutenant sit for a while with one patient, talking, nodding, taking his time, listening to what the man said. He turned his back to the camera. I saw his arms moving. What was he doing? Then he put something in his pocket and rose. But instead of going to the next cot over, where a man looked up at him, clearly expecting him to stop, Del Grazo scanned the rows, then went off in a different direction.
“Huh!” I said.
He passed by two dozen patients, including one waving for him to stop. He seemed to ask another patient — a sub crewman — for directions, then the patient pointed left and Del Grazo went that way.
Del Grazo arrived at a cot on the far end of the hangar. He bent over that man, and began talking, wiping the guy’s head, looking attentive again.
Pettit said, “He never goes cot to cot.”
I wished I could see what Del Grazo was doing when he again turned his back to the camera. There was something familiar about those arm movements. “Maybe he carried a message from one guy to a friend.”
“I asked DeBlieu if they have tapes of the hangar. Del Grazo never talks to two people side by side. And he always turns his back, like he knows the camera is there. I wondered, why? Why those specific guys? So I called Apparecio up here and we watched together. And the last four guys he attended to?”
“Yes?” I was watching Del Grazo’s back, the way his right hand seemed to extend straight out, toward the patient, and stay there. The left hand went out where I couldn’t see it, but I could tell it was moving in small circles. Both hands went into his parka pockets.
Pettit turned his face to me fully. “Those guys he talks to all work with the prototype torpedo, Colonel. He passed up everyone else. He just talks to torpedo crew.”
Softly I said, “Does he?”
“And before that, on the tapes, it was guys who work the reactor. Never a cook. Never the guy who runs the ship store. Never a third mate…”
“Pretty risky of him,” I said.
“It’s mayhem down there. Everyone running around. No one pays attention. And if it’s risky, whatever the hell he’s doing, sir, with his hands, maybe that’s his mission.”
Pettit and I stood up at the same time. I felt a dull throb of rage begin in my temples.
“The communications officer,” I said.
“Yeah. Fixes everyone’s computers. Maintains the sat equipment, radios, access to the ship,” he said.
“Seems a talk is in order,” I said.
And Pettit suddenly said, “Oh shit!”
On screen, Del Grazo had stopped walking, and was gazing up, directly into a camera. Del Grazo frowning, thinking, then looking around quickly. Del Grazo’s gaze moving again, up and left, toward another camera.
“He’s checking the cameras.”
Del Grazo looking left now, then right, scanning the hangar. Looking for… what? Pettit? The guards? Del Grazo lowering his head, moving now, slow but steady, looking neither left nor right, but heading past patients toward the hangar door, hands in his pockets, taking an Arctic stroll. A plodding walk. A walk outside.
“This is happening right now?” I said, turning to go.
“This was ten minutes ago.”
“Fuck,” I said.
We ran for the hangar.
But Del Grazo was gone.
TWENTY-TWO
DeBlieu swore softly. “So the only way to go look for him is to infect the whole ship,” he said. “Send Marines forward, expose just about everyone aboard.”
“Do you know a better way?”
“I know that you never should have brought them all on,” he said bitterly as we watched Pettit and his men head forward, a search party every bit as serious as if they approached a potentially hostile village in Afghanistan.
We were outside the bridge, above the prow and looking down, but views below were compartmentalized, blocked by superstructure, awnings, decks, antennas. DeBlieu had ordered nonessential personnel — anyone not searching for Del Grazo — to the mess, the only room big enough to hold them, while two-man Coast Guard teams — armed from the weapons locker — had been dispatched as guards to the engine room, central power plant, auxiliary control areas, and at strategically located hatches.
DeBlieu had also ordered Del Grazo to report to the bridge, over the intercom. A command unanswered. Big surprise.
Light was fading. To port, I saw that we’d pushed our way out of even the thinner ice, and had arrived at a generally open area of ocean, which probably would have been frozen solid fifty years ago this time of year. But other than a few pathetic ice rafts bobbing, we were free of the white prison, and idling in place, in case Del Grazo had gotten off.
A voice on the radio said, “Weapons locker secure, Captain. He didn’t get in here.”
Below, on deck, crew went from evacuation station to station, checking the life rafts to see if they were still there. To lower the motorized Zodiacs, brake releases could be operated by hand. The boat would then lower by gravity to the sea. There, anyone inside could disconnect the hook, start the motor with a button, and drive off.
I don’t see any Zodiacs moving away on the water, so where is he?
“My officer,” said DeBlieu savagely. His face was twisted in pain, the combined surges of guilt, rage, and humiliation that come with betrayal. “My communications man,” he said as we flashed over the enormous damage such a man — having access to every computer on the ship — could do.
DeBlieu muttered, “He could have piggybacked Chinese listeners onto every sat talk, hacked into every laptop, inserted software to monitor every study we’ve done for the State Department over the last two years.”
Is the damage over? Is Del Grazo putting some new plan into effect? Or is he just terrified, running like a kid, seeking a hiding place before the inevitable apprehension?
“If he’s smart, he had an escape plan,” I said. “Or he’s stashed a weapon. You say you’ve had him here for two years?”
DeBlieu’s jaw seemed to be grinding, his breath puffed out in bullet bursts. “Two goddamn years. But why not just take a Zodiac? He had a lead on us.”
I shook my head. “And go where? He knew we were onto him. He figured he didn’t have time to push off and get out of range. The Marines could plug him at three hundred yards.”
Eddie had taken over in the monitor lab, and was going camera to camera, like the exec on the bridge, searching for a glimpse of the running man, a flash of movement, a face staring back; in a passageway, in the laundry, the gym, the cargo hold.
A couple of big, burly, armed chiefs sent to search Del Grazo’s cabin had found, of course, nothing.
The sun was starting to sink in the heavens. We were far enough south so that, at exactly the worst time possible, natural light would disappear. The last rays sparkled and formed gray areas of shadow on the tiny passing ice floes. Reports flowed in from frustrated search parties. He was not in the aft cargo area. Not in the quarantined area. Not hiding in the copter control shack.