Clinton bunked down the hall with Pettit, complaining that the base was too hot. The Marines bunked with Montana and Wilmington survivors. Karen Vleska shared a room with Marietta Cristobel, in female officer housing.
Journalists came next, in an orchestrated parade, to interview — from a distance — the quarantined puppets; that is, after we suffered through a two-hour warning on the penalties of violating secrecy oaths, and a “suggestion session” on acceptable answers to questions.
The warnings contained words like “Leavenworth” and “the rest of your life.”
I sat in a booth and eyed a reporter from the New York Times and told the agreed-upon story. That the Montana had taken aboard unidentified frozen bodies recovered from the ice pack, probably foreign, lost since 1918. That the illness that had broken out was from the thawed bodies, and not from any new kind of virus, and was therefore contained. That the public was safe because no other vectors existed. That the Montana had been scuttled to prevent further spread of the disease, and that all aboard both vessels — the Montana and the Wilmington — had acted heroically in the face of danger and death.
Peter Del Grazo was included in the list of dead from disease. There was no mention of spies. Or silent films.
The reporter was an attractive, thirtyish blonde who flirted during the interview, and doted on the part about my Zodiac trip in the storm. She asked, legs crossed, skirt tight, voice breathy, pen poised, “Any love interest in your life at the moment, Colonel?”
“I’m free of foreign entanglements.”
“And divorced, I understand.”
“My ex and I stayed friends.”
“An attractive man like you, no girlfriend?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I’m not a ma’am. I’m a Beth. And here’s my card. Perhaps I’ll be in Anchorage on a story and we can have dinner sometime,” she said.
You’re not the one I want to have that dinner with.
The medicine worked both as cure and preventative. The protocol called for a six-day treatment, and after four weeks on base, when no new cases presented themselves, a few braver VIPs began touching down — the Secretary of Health and Human Services; the Vice President; a couple of senators from terrorism committees — making sure they were shown on TV addressing “our Arctic heroes.”
On Thanksgiving we got a terrific meal, turkey and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pies, donated by the State of New Mexico. The Discovery Channel featured stories about “the possible breakout of new viruses in the Arctic.”
There also came gifts from around the country, so many that an entire Quonset hut was needed to contain the loot, including several hundred pairs of socks, four giant flat-screen TVs, a planeload of North Carolina barbeque from Wilmington, two hundred subscriptions to the beer-of-the-month club, dinners at restaurants in thirty-one states, and a smuggled-in package from Paramount Pictures offering a million-dollar contract for movie rights, just sign here and e-mail a copy back.
Families arrived next, and “personal contacts.” There was a viewing area outside the fence, or in bad weather, relatives used the interview booths and spoke by microphone. Eddie’s wife and kids visited me. And my ex-wife, Nina, showed up when her hours with Pettit were over. I was surprised by it. It was a bittersweet session, lots of memories, but she seemed a figure from a long time ago, and I actually wished her and Pettit well.
Among the visitors to the base was Karen Vleska’s boyfriend, who took up residence in a motel thirty-five miles away and commuted daily. Since he was a lawyer for Electric Boat, he was here to prepare a corporate response should any angry civil suits be filed by relatives of the dead. This was unlikely, we’d been assured, but he stayed on anyway. He seemed a caring, loving man. I watched Karen go off often, eagerly, to sit and talk with him, or take walks along the fence, he on one side, she on the other.
I told myself she was lucky to have him. That she probably had all kinds of personal problems I’d discover if I got to know her better. That my feelings for her had been ratcheted up by danger, and that in normal day-to-day life, I’d probably lose interest in her fast.
I hated the boyfriend being there.
Meanwhile, the Spanish flu made headlines. The Washington Post ran a series reliving the horrible outbreak in 1918. The New York Times parked a science reporter at the CDC, and FOX-TV sent a crew to the North Slope of Alaska, after a scare in Wainright, a possible flu case which turned out to be a different, milder form.
Reuters headline: ANXIETY GROWS AROUND THE WORLD AS FLU SEASON ARRIVES.
We were growing more irritable by the day, and even the most conservative CDC doctors were signing their reports with the word “clean.” Finally, we were told we’d be free in two more weeks, after a few last medical tests.
“What will you do when you get home, Karen?”
My favorite part of being on base were the hikes we took, and today we were on a mesa, humping through an old firing range, under a bright, cold sun, in forty-eight-degree weather. Around us grew buffalo grass and snakeweed, and prickly pear cactus. There was cholla cactus with porcupine-style barbed quills, and strands of cottonwood. A hawk watched us pass.
“Carl wants us to take a vacation,” she said.
“Sounds great. Where?”
“Mexico. I think he’s going to propose.”
“Congratulations.”
She turned and stared at me. She seemed annoyed with me lately, but then again, tempers were growing short all around. She was healthy, fully recovered, burned brown from the hikes, trim, small, and agile, hopping from rock to rock when we reached an arroyo, scrambling up onto high ground with a gymnast’s joy. Her silvery hair, worn long again, was magnificent.
She said, “What about you? Back to Anchorage?”
“The old grind.”
“You don’t seem to mind it here like the rest of us.”
I said, “I just hide it better.” I thought, That’s because you’re here.
“Eddie told me about your ex-wife and Major Pettit.”
“Eddie’s as discreet as the National Enquirer.”
“He’s got some idea about you and me,” she said, plopping down on a sunny flat rock.
“You think? Being around Eddie is like being on Millionaire Matchmaker, except for the money.”
She reached into her rucksack and unwrapped today’s sandwich, avocado and smoked turkey on a sesame seed roll, thanks to Uncle Sam’s airdrop last night. There was apple juice in the water bottles. The sun on my face felt good. In the distance I saw a trail of rising dust approaching, which meant a jeep was out. Chief Apparecio spent his spare time repairing the old stock lying around. Trucks. Jeeps. Generators left to rust. About two million dollars of taxpayer money being intentionally left to rot.
“Eddie e-mailed me some interesting pictures,” she said, and handed over her iPhone. I cursed inwardly and felt myself grow warm. There was a shot of me sitting beside her cot on the icebreaker, while she slept. There was a shot of me wiping sweat from her forehead with a cool rag. There was a close-up of my face, and only an idiot wouldn’t see that the expression held more than professional concern. The fourth shot was of me asleep beside her, in the chair.