Frozen Solid: A Novel Read online

  “Christ, Leland, a captain has to know crap like that. And for the record, no, GENERCO would not have a problem with it. Those people aren’t stupid. They put money—very quietly—into solar and hydrogen some time ago. They see what’s coming just like the rest of us.”

  “You pass,” she said.

  “What?”

  She had made a quick calculation. He needed to know about Emily’s death. But Emily was gone, and nothing could change that. It was more important for him to know about what was down in the lab first, because it might be putting a lot more people at risk.

  “Never mind. I’ll explain later. Right now, there’s something I have to show you.”

  “What’s the yellow stuff?” he asked. The microbial colonies had grown larger, occupying more space now than the red agar.

  “I don’t know yet. But it’s growing faster than anything I’ve seen.”

  “How did you do this?”

  She told him about taking samples in the morgue and starting the cultures here. She expected him to offer some SOR-based reprimand, but he just nodded and said, “Guts and smarts—I like that. You’re just full of surprises.” He peered at her, then back at the dishes. “So it’s unusual for something to grow like this?”

  “Normal time for cultures to become visible to the naked eye is twenty-four hours, minimum. I saw them after a few minutes. And it’s more than doubled since then.”

  “You don’t know what it is, though.”

  “No. But isn’t it reasonable to believe it had something to do with the women’s deaths?”

  “Yes. And that means we have to assume it’s dangerous.”

  “Absolutely.” She saw him staring at the dishes. “It’s safe here. The cultures are sealed, and the incubator cabinet provides a second level of containment. I isolated the swabs and gloves and the other things I used.”

  “Good to know. Can you analyze it, or whatever, to see what we’re dealing with?”

  “We, Mr. Graeter?”

  He looked surprised for just an instant. “Yes, we. You’re the expert here. I’m strict, Leland, but I’m not stupid. So what do you do?”

  “Analysis is mostly performed with scanners and computers now. I doubt either are here. So we’ll rely on biochemical testing.”

  “What does that involve?”

  “A long series of eliminative, identifying tests—oxidase, indole production, coagulase test, MR-VP test—”

  “Okay, enough. The more important question is, how long will it take?”

  “Starting from scratch, with what I have here to work with, twenty-four hours minimum. But didn’t you say that Doc was working with blood samples?”

  “So he told me.”

  “If he’d come up with anything, he would have called you, right?”

  “Or risk getting my foot up his ass,” he snapped. “Sorry. Navy talk.”

  “Forget it. My father spoke Army. For the tests I’ll run, it could be sooner. Or later.”

  “Should we tell everyone?”

  “Understand that I come from a facility where all information is closely held. Need-to-know is the first commandment.”

  “That BARDA place.”

  “Right, that BARDA place. So I can sound a little paranoid. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t.”

  “Rationale?”

  “I was remembering your comment about destabilizing an already fragile population. All those T3s walking around chatting with themselves. It’s one thing to tell people they’re locked in with a possibly lethal unknown pathogen. Much better if we can say, ‘And we have a countermeasure.’ There’s always a chance that it’s treatable—staph, strep, whatever.”

  “Information could get out of here, too. Just imagine—CNN breaking news: ‘Killer Superbug Devastates South Pole, Threatens Planet,’ ” he said.

  “Which they would do.”

  “In a heartbeat. If it bleeds, it leads. Suppose some people aren’t infected? If we wait, carriers could make healthy ones sick, right?”

  “They could do that even if we tell them. Right now, we don’t know who to quarantine.”

  “What about Merritt?”

  “It’s your call, obviously. But I think she falls into the need-to-know category. She is the chief scientist, after all.”

  “Yeah,” Graeter said reluctantly. But he recited, “ ‘In the event discovery is made by any personnel of any condition that might reasonably be construed to constitute a threat to all or part of the station and/or personnel, such discovery shall be communicated to the senior and/or acting senior officials immediately.’ ”

  “SORs, right? Memorized?”

  “Most of them. Would you explain it to her, though? You speak Beaker.”

  “Sure. I’ll set the tests up, then go see her.”

  “Do it.” He started out.

  She’d made her decision, held up one hand.

  “Wait. There are some other things you need to know. I saved the worst for last.”

  She told him about Emily’s murder, Blaine’s confession, and Triage.

  He reached for one of the bench tops. His other hand clenched into a fist, white-knuckled, new cracks opening, fresh blood seeping. “God damn it to hell,” he said. “If I could find the bastard who did that, I would shoot him myself.”

  “Are you sure yours is the only gun here?”

  “Reasonably.” Then he shook his head, as though clearing cobwebs after a hard punch. “Let me say this out loud to make sure it’s straight. The man who tortured a woman to death is walking around my station.”

  “He might have flown out after he killed her. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “He probably killed Fida, too,” she said.

  “So he’s still here. Or they are.”

  “Yes. It could be a team effort, for all we know,” she said.

  “You’re right. Wait a minute. You said you saw that video on Monday?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now it’s”—he glanced at his watch, shook his head—“two A.M. on Thursday. Why in hell did you wait so long to tell me?”

  “Think about it. The killer could have been any man in the station.”

  “You thought it might be me?”

  “The way you were when I got here?” She shrugged.

  “Yeah, okay.” He nodded, rubbed the side of his face. “What changed your mind?”

  “You did,” she said.

  “Huh. Imagine that.”

  “How many men are still here?”

  He closed his eyes, remembering. “Thirty-two. Eighteen Beakers, fourteen Draggers.”

  “We could question every one of them,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “Even at just half an hour per man, that’s seventeen hours. More if you figure in time for breaks, bathroom calls, eating.”

  “Did your marshal training include interrogation techniques?”

  “We barely got past Handcuffs 101.”

  “So neither of us is a trained or experienced interviewer. From what I saw on the video, the killer looked trained and experienced, both.”

  “Easy for him to slip past us,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  “We could try a lineup,” he said. “Put every man in the station through it. See if we recognize anyone.”

  “We’d have to figure out some way to do it looking down on them from above,” she pointed out. “The video never showed a straight-on shot. What about McMurdo? Or the New Zealand Police?” she asked.

  “SORs say—” He interrupted himself. “For some reason, that sounds ridiculous.”

  “Maybe, but it could be important. What do they say?”

  “Crime reports go through McMurdo to New Zealand’s national police and our State Department.”

  “Not like nine-one-one. So no immediate help.”

  “I’ll call as soon as comms are up, of course. But the killer may be loose in the station. Accomplices, too.”

  “Infection at every
level,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking. A microbe of some kind almost certainly killed the three women. So there’s infection at the microscopic level. And a much bigger infection is killing people at the macro level.”

  “Only a microbiologist would see things that way,” he said.

  “Maybe. But there is still the question: what do we do?”

  “I could make an all-hands announcement or call a meeting,” Graeter said. “Just put it out there for everybody to hear. See what happens.”

  “I don’t like that,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “A lot of them already think there’s a killer supergerm loose. Then they hear that some psycho murderer is running around? Talk about destabilizing.”

  “What would you do?” he asked. “If you heard an announcement like that?”

  “I’d grab the nearest weapon. It would be very hard to stay rational.”

  “So maybe we can’t do anything right away,” he said. “But we should at least tell Merritt.”

  “We should, you’re right.”

  “Could you, when you talk to her about the other things?”

  “I can. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going back to my office and make sure my gun’s in working order.”

  48

  THE SAT PHONE HUMMED, SIGNALING AN INCOMING CALL. MERRITT glanced at the door to her room one more time, making sure it was locked. She answered, said her name, waited.

  “How copy?” Gerrin asked.

  There was always garbage noise on the sat phone calls down here, sounds like wind blowing through canyons and gravel crunching. But she could understand him. “Clear.”

  “We discussed the situation.”

  “And?” Merritt asked. Before Gerrin could continue, there was a knock. “Who is it?” Merritt called.

  “Hallie Leland. I need to talk to you. I tried your office, figured you would be here.” Merritt heard her try the locked door.

  “Can this wait until the morning. I just got to sleep.”

  “I think we should talk now.”

  Merritt mouthed a silent curse, then whispered into the phone, “Make it quick. Someone’s at my door.”

  Gerrin didn’t need much time for what he had to say.

  She let Hallie in. “Are you catching something? You’re starting to look like the rest of us,” Merritt said. She had thrown a robe over her red long johns.

  “Maybe the dreaded Pole cold. I’ll be okay.” She explained how she had obtained material from the women in the morgue and was culturing it in her lab.

  Merritt flushed. “You didn’t notify me.”

  “I didn’t want to put you on the spot.”

  “So you’re running standard biochemical screens?”

  “Yes.” Hallie explained the tests she’d set up. “Can you think of anything I missed?”

  “Microbiology isn’t my field. How soon will we have results?”

  “Tomorrow is my best guess. Is the winterover flyout happening?”

  “Not unless the temperature goes up by about twenty degrees.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “It’s a weird time of year here, very unstable atmospheric conditions. So it could happen. I’d say fifty-fifty.”

  “But there’s something else. Two things, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Vishnu’s dead.”

  Setting up the biochemical tests had not been complicated. They were the kinds of things she had first done as an undergraduate in the microbio labs. The procedure was exacting and required strict attention, though. It also required biosecurity gear—such as it was here at the South Pole. Hooded Tyvek suit, booties, mask. And, though she would be working in a biosecure “glove box” made of quarter-inch, high-impact acrylic plastic, she put on surgical gloves as well.

  It had required almost two hours of delicate and tedious work: inoculating a series of oxidase test slides, Enterotubes, and Oxi/Ferm tubes, securing them in incubators. She had discarded her security gear in biohazard containers, then ventilated and sterilized the lab.

  Before leaving, she had gone to the freezer to check on the Vishnu sample. It had not grown since her last viewing. In fact, it looked dull brown and mushy, like a rotten apple.

  “What the hell?” she had said. “Gods aren’t supposed to die.”

  “Same thing that happened before,” Merritt said. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Done deal, then,” Merritt said, glancing at her sideways. “What a shame.”

  “We have to get some more.”

  Merritt looked up. “What?”

  “I’ll dive again.”

  “Is that a good idea? Not feeling well? And after what happened last time?”

  Don’t dive sick: it was one of the first contraindications beginners learned. But that was under normal circumstances. Hallie waved Merritt’s concern off.

  “I’ve done worse. And this is too important. I’ll use one of the station’s dry suits, and we will leak-test the hell out of it first. Do you think we could get Guillotte down to the dive shed at around four?”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “This thing could have unimaginable potential. You know what Emily and Fida learned. There’s nothing more we can do with the bacterial cultures right now.”

  “You’re right. Okay, go do what you need to—eat, drink, rest, whatever. I’ll collect Guillotte, and we’ll meet you in the shed at four.”

  “I’ll be there.” Hallie could see that Merritt assumed they were through. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

  Merritt’s eyes narrowed. Hallie could hear her thinking, What now?

  “It’s about Maynard Blaine.”

  “Did that peabrain hit on you again?”

  “No. But I made him tell me about Triage.”

  Funny, Hallie thought. She looks like Blaine did when I told him. Merritt’s shock quickly changed to confusion. “About what?”

  She recounted what she had learned from Blaine. “Did you know anything about this secret research he claimed to be doing?”

  “Nothing.” Merritt was rubbing her hands as if trying to get something sticky off them. “NSF should never have done that without telling me. Damn them. Damn him. Blaine lied to my face.”

  “Seems to have a knack. He lied to me, too,” Hallie said. “And probably to Emily.”

  Merritt looked disgusted. “The bastard. I’ll try to sort this out. Maybe we’ll get comms back up. You can rest a bit. Sound good?”

  “The rest part does,” Hallie said. “But there’s one more thing you need to know.”

  49

  “LELAND TOOK BIOSAMPLES FROM THE BODIES IN THE MORGUE. She’s culturing them in her lab now.”

  Merritt had called the others to her office. Guillotte had not come yet, but Blaine and Doc were there.

  “Oh God,” Doc said. “It feels like things are coming apart.”

  “It feels like you’re coming apart,” Blaine said.

  “If she gets viable colonies, and figures out what it is, we’re finished.” Doc put his face in his hands.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Merritt said. “She knows that Durant was killed.”

  “What?” the other two screeched in unison. “How could she know that?”

  Merritt explained about the surveillance camera.

  “God damn,” Blaine said. “Why would she have put a camera there?”

  Merritt frowned at such a stupid question. “Simple. She felt afraid. Wanted to know if anybody came into her room while she wasn’t there.” Merritt looked directly at Blaine. “Thanks to you.”

  “You fucking idiot,” Doc blurted. “This is all your fault.”

  “It is very important to keep calm,” Merritt said.

  “You didn’t put Triage in those women.” Doc’s chin was quivering.

  “I am not going to sneak back into that lab aga
in,” Blaine said. “They might have put a camera in there, too. Maybe Guillotte will do it, but I won’t.”

  “I said to relax. You won’t have to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s going to dive again.”

  “Why would she do that?” Blaine asked. The answer dawned on him before Merritt replied. “That’s why you wanted me to kill the extremophile.”

  “Insurance,” Merritt said. “Just in case.”

  “What did you do?” Doc asked.

  Blaine explained about the chlorine.

  “It worked,” Merritt said. “She insisted on diving. I didn’t even have to bring it up.”

  “Her last dive?” Blaine said.

  “If Guillotte and I have anything to say about it.” Merritt nodded.

  Doc frowned. “I’m not sure I like the diving accident. They could—”

  “It’s perfect. Diving accidents happen all the time,” Merritt said. “And in a place like this …”

  “That freezing, hypersaline water will preserve her body better than embalming. They’ll find—”

  “Do you know how deep that thing is? Thousands of feet. They won’t find anything.”

  “She works for an agency of the U.S. government,” Doc said. “There will be an investigation and—”

  Merritt cut him off: “There is always an investigation. They never care what actually happened. It’s about covering asses. Making sure it was somebody else’s fault. This is government we’re talking about.”

  “But are we really sure this is the best course? With three recent—”

  “Even better. We write the accident report. Everybody was sick. Maybe it got her while she was underwater. She was tired and disoriented. I counseled against diving. She insisted. All we know is that she never resurfaced.”

  “Where is Guillotte?” Blaine asked.

  “I told him to be here,” Merritt said. “You know how he is.”

  “Did you talk to Gerrin?” Doc asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say? About Triage, I mean?”

  “They don’t think Triage had anything to do with the women’s deaths. We’re to go ahead as planned. So really, it’s finished. As soon as we get a weather window, those women fly out.”

  “And the rest is history,” Blaine said.