In Cold Pursuit (36 page)

She backed up one e-mail and found what she expected: Sweeny’s original request for a photograph of all personnel who were working with him that year. Why would he want that? And who was Edgar Hallowell, and why was Morris Sweeny interested in him? She closed her eyes, concentrating.
The only name even close to that is Ted, which could be a nickname for Edgar. But why would a political reporter coming to Antarctica to learn about climate change be interested in a guy who blows things up?

Pondering these questions, Valena turned on the word-processing program, opened a blank document, and began to write, making notes of the conversations she had had with the people who had been in Emmett’s camp:

She could not bring herself to make an entry next to the last name, so instead she added Ted’s, just in case he had some previously undisclosed connection to the deceased.

It was getting late. Valena turned off the computer and once again hid it inside her closet. She rolled her bath kit and pajamas into her towel, stuffed them under her arm, and headed down the hallway toward the showers, where she crammed herself into one of the tight, worn-out shower stalls with the plastic curtains too narrow to fill the gaps they were meant to cover.

The water became hot very quickly. Abstractedly, she thought of Peter the energy efficiency engineer. Had he fitted the system with a recirculating hot water system so that people wouldn’t have to run the water long to get it hot?
It’s all resources
, she thought.
Antarctica is all about the resources. So if that’s so, what resource came into play at Emmett’s high camp?

She was at last beginning to relax a little, enjoying the sensation of hot water coursing over her body, when she heard a familiar voice call her name. It was Cupcake.
Oh, good, I can ask her Ted’s full name
, she thought, as she turned off the water and pulled the shower curtain across her body. “Hey, what’s—”

“Just looking for you, darling.” Cupcake wobbled a little, the effect of several stiff drinks. “You know, I’m good. Real good.”

“Aw, come on, Dorothy! I’m in the shower!” Valena pulled the scanty curtain closed as far as it would go and turned the water back on.

“I can see that, not that you’re showing me much.”

Valena’s blood began to boil, an old habit of getting mad so she wouldn’t have to know that she was scared. “Get out of here! I mean
now
!”

Cupcake began to back away. “Don’t get so touchy. Wha’ happened at the rest of that meeting? ‘At’s why I’m here. I jus’ wanna know what’s up …”

“I said go away!”

Another woman came into the bathroom. “Hey there, Cakes, wassup?”

“Oh, I’m just having a little chat with my friend here, tryin’ ta calm her down. She’s sort of upset.”

Valena stuck her head out again. “Upset? You want to see upset? Just push it an inch farther!”

The third woman grabbed Cupcake by the arm. “Come on, Dorothy, you know better than to screw with a grantee.”

Cupcake yanked her arm loose. “Screw with her? Hell, I came in here to warn her about her new boyfriend!”

The woman grabbed Cupcake by both arms now and hauled her out the door. “You’re drunk! Come
on
, Dorothy!”

As the door swung shut, Valena heard Cupcake yell, “He looks real sweet, but it’s just a candy coating! You don’t want to know what’s hiding inside!”

Valena huddled against the back wall of the shower. Adrenaline coursed through her naked body. She began to tremble, shivering with cold even under the hot water, and she wondered if she was going to throw up. She tried to think, to get herself under control.
It’s just been a hard few days
, she told herself firmly.
Get a grip. Yeah, there’s bad shit happening around here, people getting killed, but I’ve got that under control now. I’m leaving for Cape Royds in the morning, and I’ll be safe where I’m going. Okay, maybe it’s not smart to go to that field camp where Lindemann is, but what’s he going to do to me? Screw up his doctoral position? Not hardly.

The water began to warm her skin, but deep inside she still felt cold. She turned off the water and pulled her towel inside. Tried to rub herself dry. Her skin felt like it was crawling around on her body.

Cautiously, she stepped out of the shower, dressed, and
headed down the hallway, glancing both ways to make sure Cupcake wasn’t waiting for her there.

Back in her room, she climbed into her bunk, pulled the blankets and comforter up to her chin, and closed her eyes. Slowly, by inches, she admitted to herself that she was scared, not angry, and that what had scared her most was the chance that Cupcake might be right about Dave Fitzgerald.

V
ALENA ONCE AGAIN AWOKE EARLY.
S
HE DRESSED
quickly and, leaving her gear in the room, slipped out the door and across the way toward the building where the Airlift Wing had its offices. There she left a note with Master Sergeant John Lansing, with instructions to give it to Larry. It read:

She wrote her e-mail address across the bottom of the page.

This task dispatched, she jogged back across to Building 155 and headed down the hallway in search of a hearty breakfast. Glancing neither left at the flight manifests, nor right at the monitors mounted near the galley door, she grabbed a tray and headed into the food lines, steering a course directly toward the omelet man. “Good morning,” she said, awarding him her best smile.

“Good morning to you,” he said. “What can I get for you today?”

“I want three
fresh
eggs with tomatoes, black olives, mushrooms, green peppers, and jack cheese,” she said.

“It’s yours,” he said, cracking the eggs onto the griddle. He chopped the yolks expertly with the edge of his spatula and started adding the toppings.

“I wonder if I could ask you kind of a personal question,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“The other day, how did you know I needed privacy?”

The omelet man continued to stir and fold the eggs, indicating not a flicker of change in the tenor of the conversation. “I’m in the room next to your friend Matt in the dorms,” he replied. “There was a discussion out in the TV lounge.” He turned the eggs, flicking a runaway bit of cheese onto the heap. “It had been quite a day for news, as you’ll recall.”

“I’m not used to this place yet. I don’t know how people do business.”

He scooped the eggs onto his spatula and slid them onto the plate. “There’s good folks down here, by and large,” he commented. “Everybody’s got their reason for being here and not somewhere else, but once they get here, they usually find a place here. Those that don’t, you seldom see. They hide.”

They hide
, thought Valena. “Thanks for the omelet,” she said. Completing the circuit of the service area, she poured two glasses of water and one of orange juice, grabbed a muffin, and headed toward a table under the windows.

She was four forkfuls of egg into her meal when a woman with gray hair and gentle blue eyes appeared with a tray at the opposite side of the table. “May I join you?” she inquired.

“Certainly.”

“You’re Valena Walker, am I right?” She settled into a chair and arranged her breakfast in front of her. She moved methodically, removing each item from the tray and laying it out as Emily Post might have done.

“Yes,” she said, “Emmett Vanderzee’s student.” She tried to sound cheery as she added, “Why, am I wearing a sign on my back?”

“No, it’s on your big red parka,” said the woman. “It’s my job to know who all the grantees are.” She extended a hand. “And how rude of me to not introduce myself. I’m Nancy Saylor. I’m in charge of Berg Field Center.”

Valena shook her hand. “Well, what luck, then. I need to come see you this morning to check out some equipment.”

Nancy set about consuming a large bowl of the homemade granola topped with yogurt, canned peaches, and milk. “No need to. When George told me to reinventory the gear Emmett had checked out, I sent someone to fetch it but simply put it back into Emmett’s cage. Like you, I am hopeful that he shall return this year.”

“His cage?”

Nancy smiled. “It’s a system we have so that people can come and go at whatever hour to work with their field gear. In the back of BFC, we have a series of screened alcoves with combination locks on them, and you can get in there and get your gear anytime you want. That way I don’t have to lock the whole place up or be there twenty-four hours a day.”

“I see.”

“Before he came south this year, Emmett filled out a request for the equipment. That way we know we have enough, and if we don’t, we can order more.” She waved her spoon concisely in the air to describe things shuttling back and forth. “At any rate, when he arrived this year I already had his order waiting for him in his cage. He took his part of the kit when he went to the high camp last week and left it in his office. They weren’t planning on spending the night”—she gave Valena a look that said
little do they understand this place
—”but of course they had all the equipment they might need, including sleep kits, tents, stove, food, and a Gamow bag.”

“A Gamow bag.”

“Of course, I don’t handle that gear,” she said. “The Gamow is issued through Science Support Center, I believe, but for some reason, it was returned to me last year instead of going directly to them.”

“You mean the one that was airdropped?” Valena asked. “But I thought—” she managed to stop herself before saying, they only found that this year.

“I mean the one Emmett had with him when he first went
up to the high camp last year.” She paused from her eating to study Valena’s face. “You don’t think that Emmett would go to high elevation without proper precautions, do you?”

“I… to tell you the truth, I don’t know Emmett all that well.” She paused, then stated, for what felt like the fiftieth time, “I was brought onto the project just a short while ago.”

Nancy went back to her granola. “Of course. Yes, I heard about that. His other fellows decided to come down with a different event this year.” She shook her head. “Irritating fellows. You’re much more pleasant. What were their names?”

“Schwartz and Lindemann.”

“Ah, yes; Schwartz and Lindemann. I always thought of them as Rosencranz and Guildenstern, only with attitude.”

“And Emmett is Prince Hamlet?”

“Very good. Yes, the one with the conscience.” Nancy shook her head again. “He gets himself so wound up. But that shouldn’t be your problem. You are here to do research and get your degree.”

“I’m here to get my degree, yes, but also do something worth doing and to see Antarctica.”

“We all like to feel that we are making a contribution down here. That’s why we’re all here, you know. To support science. It takes this whole support staff”—she lifted her spoon and made a circle in the air to encompass the entirety of McMurdo Station—”to send you scientists into the field each year. I forget what the ratio is, but there must be four or five of us to send each one of you into the field. But it’s worth it. Do your best to preserve this place, Valena. Help keep the ice from melting. It’s so special. No, that’s trite. It is an extraordinary place, and I personally believe that our continuance as a species depends on humbling ourselves before such mighty and fragile places as this.”

Valena could think of nothing to add to that.

Nancy set down her spoon and took a sip of her tea. “You know how quickly it’s melting, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t know. Not for sure. That’s part of what we’re here to study. But there are indications that it is accelerating, and that scares me.”

“Good. Pay attention. I am pleased to support you in your work.”

Valena felt like she had received a benediction from a priest. “Thank you. You remind me of my high school history teacher.”

Nancy smiled more broadly. “Perhaps because I was one, before I started coming here.”

“What an interesting change of jobs. How did you come to make such a change?”

Nancy smiled sadly. “One has one’s reasons.”

Valena took several more bites of her eggs before her mind swung back to an earlier part of the conversation. “Tell me more about this Gamow bag that came to you. The one that Emmett took up originally. How did you get it, and why wasn’t it at the camp when it was needed?”

Nancy shook her head. “I’m not sure why, but it came back with some field gear they weren’t using. The guy who unloads the Twin Otters down on the flight line brought the load up. It had apparently gotten put into the plane … by mistake.”

“But how could that happen? What do these things look like?”

Nancy continued to consume her breakfast with utmost serenity. “You’re talking about a bundle about a foot and a half square, rolled up. It’s made of a flexible material, rather like an overlarge sleeping bag. You open it up, put your patient inside, zip it shut—special zippers that don’t leak air—and then pump it up to pressure, simulating sea level or even below. But it doesn’t work if it isn’t there.”

“Did it look like it had been stuffed in with the other gear intentionally?”

“Perhaps it had merely been placed inside the wrong duffel. A poor arrangement, obviously, the duffels looking so much alike.”

“No one’s mentioned this to me before.”

“Interesting. I suppose they were all rather embarrassed.”