North of Boston (17 page)

Everyone has a nice chuckle over that.

The doctor smiles with the lower half of his face. “The physiologic process actually reversed itself. We have no idea how that happened. We've never seen that in a human before.”

I shoot a tiny smile back at him. I have no idea what to make of any of this.

The young sports scientist steps to the front of the room. He's as hip as you can be in a uniform, with an endearing cowlick at the crown of his short-haired head. He dims the lights and pulls down a screen. Of all the film clips I expect to see projected on it, about the last is a dozen Siberian huskies tethered to a stationary sled, barking uproariously and straining against their harnesses, obviously eager to run.

“The human body is constantly burning through its reserves of glycogen and fat. The harder it works, the faster the stores are depleted. Some of us call this process
exercise
.” He smiles to let this ray of lightheartedness sink in. “As energy is depleted, we feel fatigue, and it becomes increasingly difficult to continue exercising until glycogen and fat stores are replenished. We've always thought of fatigue as one of the ways the body protects itself, a necessary biological process common to all living things. Then someone noticed a curious thing about the dogs who run the annual Iditarod sled race in Alaska.
They didn't get tired.
They ran eleven hundred miles across difficult terrain in freezing temperatures, and when they got to the end, they'd turn around and want to do it all over again.

“Researchers decided to measure their metabolic rates at different stops along the trail. At the start of the race, their bodies behaved in ways we think of as normal. But within twenty-four hours, their metabolic rates had slowed to the level you would expect to see in resting subjects. That's right:
slowed.
While they were running about a hundred miles a day and keeping it up for ten or twelve days in a row.

“It made no sense, had never been observed before, and went against everything we thought we knew about the mammalian body. But there it was. Everyone could see it happening. Somehow the dogs were managing to stop—and even reverse—the fatiguing process.

“Since then we've been trying to find the biological mechanism, or switch, that the dogs are using to reverse the physiology of fatigue. It's entirely possible that humans have the same capacity. If we can find this switch, and learn to turn it on and off, we could teach our soldiers to overcome fatigue in strenuous situations such as combat. Unfortunately, our research so far has been inconclusive. But now you've come along and shown us something very similar in the case of thermal exposure.”

He smiles broadly, like a man meeting his beloved. “So now we have a whole set of different questions to ask: How are you similar to a sled dog? How are sled dogs similar to you?”

I smile back, not so broadly. What I love about scientists is their vast imaginations and endearing social clumsiness.

Commander Stockwell leans across the table toward me, speaks in a clandestine voice. “What if someday we could program these twin metabolic functions, or train people in them? Imagine a fatigue-free soldier who could survive extremes of temperature. We almost wouldn't need troops anymore, just a few well-trained individuals. It sounds like science fiction now, but almost every medical advance and technology we rely on today sounded like science fiction when it was first considered.”

There's silence at the conference table. I sense that I'm supposed to say something. But what? The whole thing feels weirdly invasive—all these people taking an interest in my body for reasons I didn't know until now and could never in a thousand years have guessed. I need time to sort it out, fit it into my identity somehow.
Pirio the Bionic Woman
doesn't sound right. But that's sort of what they're telling me.

I need a donut. I get up and walk to the side table, where there's an untouched assortment. I pick a chocolate, a glazed, and a jelly. This is no time to count calories. I bring the paper plate back to the table and start in on the chocolate.

Dr. Gas Lamp gives me his tepid smile. “Your physical was completely normal, as were all your labs. You're perfectly healthy, Ms. Kasparov. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Yet you warmed yourself somehow in a situation that ought to have eventually killed you. We'd like to know more about how you did that.”

“The psychological aspect needs to be investigated, too,” Commander Stockwell asserts in a dry voice that sounds like a concession.

Flanagan takes the opportunity to chime in. “There could be personality traits that contribute to your resilience. Even attitudes and beliefs can play a part. Testing would give us a more thorough profile.” She smiles, determined to establish trust. “The self-knowledge could be valuable for you, too.”

The chocolate's a bit dry and crumbly, so I try the jelly. The people in this room smile way too much.

The psychologist's eyes brim with sympathy. “This must be a lot for you to process right now.” She reminds me of the Empath on
Star Trek
, with her big pooling eyes and cushion of bosom.

“Yes, it is.” In fact, echoes of the words I've heard are reverberating in my brain.
Sled dogs. Biomarkers. Fatigue-free soldiers. Science fiction.
I think I liked being a miracle more than I would enjoy being a specimen. A miracle is wondrous and powerful, but a specimen is small and brainless. It exists at the wrong end of pointed implements such as pens, tweezers, and microscopes.

“We would very much appreciate your cooperation for one more day,” Commander Stockwell says.

Flanagan offers a coaxing smile. “Our battery of psychological tests is quite sophisticated. It could fill us in on mental survivalist traits that can't be discovered any other way.”

“Sorry. I don't do psychological tests.”

“Really? Not at all?” She wobbles a little regretful smile that promises best-friend status if I concede.

“Not on your life.”

Flanagan looks startled, can't conceal a glint of anger. “May I ask why?”

I purse my lips to keep from saying what I shouldn't. In my mind's eye, I see a fat manila folder with my name on it sitting on Dickhead Bates's desk. It's crammed with tests, reports, notes, and analyses from the psychiatrist at Children's Hospital, the psychological testing service, and the therapist at Gaston. Hundreds of pages of pseudoscience to rationalize locking a girl in a room not much bigger than a walk-in closet for twenty-four hours at a time. A brilliant, benign, necessary, air-tight diagnosis that in the end was just a way of not taking an innocent, troubled child at face value or giving her what she most needed: the benefit of the doubt.

“It's personal,” I tell Trudy Flanagan.

Flanagan begins shuffling papers clumsily. Commander Stockwell frowns.

I address my next remarks to her. “You have my DNA, CAT scans, MRIs, and bodily fluids. I swam in cold water for you. I think that's enough.”

Stockwell regards me patiently. She's pleased with today's results and doesn't need to push for more right now. “You might reconsider when you've had more time to think about it. Your country is grateful for your service, Ms. Kasparov.”

She slides an envelope toward me. Inside is a five-hundred-dollar honorarium and a complimentary ticket to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum.

“Maybe they'll put me in it,” I say.

—

I have a few hours to kill before my flight, so I visit the museum. A big hardcover compendium of believe-it-or-not facts catches my eye in the gift shop. I buy it for Noah and read it myself on the plane. Dancing ants, fainting cats, a blind photographer winning awards.
Strange doings,
I think,
are business as usual on planet Earth
.

I
t's just past two a.m. A harsh floodlight illuminates the Bay State Cleaning Company van parked near the entrance of the Ocean Catch processing plant and corporate headquarters. Two other cars are parked near the van—an old Corolla and a Chevy Impala that looks like it should have been scrapped years ago. There's a sharp bite of salt in the air from the ocean a few blocks away, and the creeping toxic odor of broken tar from potholes.

To avoid any security cameras, I left my car in a lot a few blocks east and picked my way along a narrow, rutted service road that runs parallel to the main street. The door Mrs. Smith told me about is just ahead, down a few concrete steps, lit by a single bulb overhead. It's standing about a foot ajar, probably propped open at the bottom. For five or ten minutes, I stay in the shadows, watching the door. No one goes in or out. I pull my wool cap lower over my face and scoot inside.

A basement storage room. Empty, bright, just a clean smooth gray-painted floor, and cold, dehumidified air. I pass through a door on the far wall into a hallway that has recently been cleaned with ammonia. At one end is a closed metal door, at the other a door with a red Exit sign above it. It opens onto a stairwell.

At the first landing, I stop and listen. The high whine of a vacuum cleaner reaches my ears. I proceed past the second floor and pause at the door to the third floor, where the administrative offices are. All's quiet, so I slip into the carpeted corridor. An elevator is directly across from me. To my left are four doors. Three are closed; the last is open, spilling light onto a yellow molded plastic cart stuffed with brooms and mops and cleaning liquids. To my right there's a bathroom and Dustin Hall's office.

Mrs. Smith said that Fred Jacobsen's office was next to Dustin Hall's, but it's obviously not. Who knows what other errors her misfiring brain has made? Maybe the whole ship's log thing is a fantasy. At least she was right about the cleaning company. I try the first door on my left. It opens smoothly, and in the same instant the room springs to brilliant life. It's the staff kitchen with a motion-activated overhead fixture where Mrs. Smith had her retirement party.

I open the next door, and this time the room stays dark. I enter, close the door gently behind me, and flip the wall switch. The office is small and crammed with furniture—desk, small couch, armchair, coffee table. A beige vertical blind covers the window. A metal file cabinet in the corner is stuffed so that the drawers don't close, and there are stacks of paper all over the floor. Looks like the digital age missed this room.

The diploma hanging above the desk among some framed family photos was awarded to Frederick Prentiss Jacobsen by Northeastern University in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Two. I realize Mrs. Smith was right after all. Jacobsen does have the next office to Hall's; it's just not the next room. Jacobsen himself, if he's the guy holding up a trout in one of the photos, flanked by two boys roughly thirteen and fifteen years old, appears to be in his early fifties. Stout, with thinning blond hair, pink flaccid cheeks, and sweetish liquidy eyes.

A vacuum cleaner starts up in the room down the hall. I lock the door. I twirl in Jacobsen's imitation leather chair a few times like a kid. I can't deny there's a thrill in actually being here, undetected (so far), with (I hope) some answers close at hand. I rummage through the desk drawers for the perverse fun of it, but the contents are dull.

I move to the filing cabinet where Mrs. Smith said the logs are kept. I find invoices, engineering records, bills of sale, mechanical specs. The information dates back ten years. I scan for names of vessels, voyage reports, anything that might be a euphemism for a ship's log. Nothing. Maritime charts, reports from the EPA, and Fishing Commission documents fill the next two drawers. The bottom drawer's more of the same, except for a bottle of Jack Daniel's hiding out in the back with two shot glasses wrapped in paper towels.

The vacuum cleaner shuts off, leaving the floor preternaturally quiet. I have no idea what I would do if someone tried the door. The cleaning staff would be surprised to find it locked, since it wasn't before. I'm going through the stacks of paper on the floor when I hear the soft pneumatic whoosh of the elevator door. I freeze. A man's voice calls out for Nanda in a charming Indian accent—part clipped British, part dusky subcontinent. A woman's voice answers melodically from down the hall. A few seconds later there is joyful, bubbling laughter just outside Jacobsen's office. She must have rushed to meet him, and now, not more than ten feet from where I'm sitting, a passionate reunion is taking place. It is heartening to think that the long, lonely nights of a cleaning woman can be enlivened in this way.

I listen because I have no choice. It's impossible to pay attention to what you're doing when people are consuming each other sexually within earshot. And I can't exactly bang on the wall and tell them to get a room. I try not to follow where the sounds are taking me—back through the past to my own wild nights, which eventually became the last wild night, which segued into long, cold nights of Russian novels and decaffeinated tea. There's no place you can go in this world, no time of the day or night, that will let you forget about love. Finally, just when it seems the happy couple is on the verge of falling to the carpet to consummate their passion, they manage to drag themselves to the office at the end of the hall, leaving me to get back to what I was doing.

That's when I see the portable plastic file cabinet on the floor a few feet from the desk. It's got a handle on top and a clasp that's partway open. A little sticker under the handle says “Logs”
in blue marker. I open it. The files are arranged alphabetically by vessel. The
Sea Wolf
folder is second to last. I pull it out and scan the contents. The most recent report is three years old.

I spread the other folders across the desk and quickly flip through them. Each one contains reports that are no more than a few months old. The company's entire fleet has been submitting detailed descriptions of its voyages to the director of operations in handwritten, stapled pages that are chronologically filed, the most recent on top. The entire fleet, that is, except the
Sea Wolf
, which hasn't filed a report since 2010. Despite how busy it's been.

Again, the elevator doors sigh and ping. I wait, expecting to hear someone get out, perhaps a supervisor to ruin things for the lovebirds. The doors close; I hear nothing. It seems no one got off, but then I sense a quiet step on the carpet outside Jacobsen's door. I'm thinking I must have imagined it when I see a gleam as the doorknob slowly turns, stopping when it hits the lock. Whoever is on the other side of the door pulls and pushes it a little, gently.

A woman's voice rings sharply, but with a genteel Indian cadence. “Can I help you, sir?”

I have no idea where she came from. I'm pretty sure she's not the young woman who's most likely being blissfully ravished down the hall.

A male voice answers—an American voice, low, muffled. The two converse briefly. I can't make out the words. He seems to be explaining something. She gives a friendly laugh. A jingling sound follows. There's a metal clicking in the lock. She's got a set of keys and is about to open Jacobsen's door.

I can't go under the desk; it's too obvious. I fly across the room and manage to squeeze behind the armchair as the woman finds the correct key and turns the lock. I'm crouching down as the door swings open. Silence as they enter. The man thanks her, says he usually has his key. He—Jacobsen?—says something in a joking way about forgetting to shut off the lights. The woman asks if he still wants the office cleaned. He says it won't be necessary, and she leaves. Who the hell goes to the office at this time of night?

When I peek out from behind the chair, it's not the man in the fishing photo that I see, but the man who stole Larry Wozniak's identity. I don't know his real name, so for now I have to be satisfied with his borrowed one. He's sitting at Jacobsen's computer, and if he looked up he would see me, but he's too busy inserting his thumb drive into the USB port one-handedly. He's got his hair in a negligible ponytail; the lenses of his glasses flash in the computer glare. When the download's finished, he stands up and stuffs the thumb drive into his jeans pocket. The ship's logs are on the desk where I left them, a spread of nondescript manila folders. He doesn't touch them. He doesn't bother with the cabinet either, doesn't investigate the portable file box on the floor. A second later, he's out the door, leaving it ajar.

I crawl out from behind the chair. At the door I pause, listen. There's a three-way conversation taking place at the end of the hall. From the civil sound of it, I'd say the lovers were dressed and dutifully dusting when the woman with the keys arrived. I don't hear a trace of Wozniak. I look out. The corridor is empty. I've probably got only a few seconds before the supervisor comes back this way. I ought to jump into the stairwell, but I'm convinced Wozniak is still on this floor, and I want to know what he's up to.

I step lightly to Dustin Hall's door and touch the doorknob. Crazy, but it feels warm. And the door gives. Gently, I push it an inch or two, until I can see a corner of Hall's desk, illuminated by a lamp. I dare not open the door any more for fear of drawing Wozniak's attention, if he's there. But I know he is. And I can't help it. I swing the door open a little wider, until I see the sleeve of his brown leather jacket resting on the gleaming mahogany.

I retrace my steps and slip into the stairwell, race down three flights. Opening the door to the basement, I practically fall into a young, dark-skinned woman carrying a large carton with several rolls of toilet paper stacked on top. Her startled look quickly turns into alarm. She's not sure who I am; she only knows I'm not supposed to be there.

“Good evening, miss. I'm from the home office, sent to inspect your crew's work. I have to say I'm impressed. Very, very impressed. The carpets are fresh, not a speck of dust anywhere. Empty wastebaskets, spotless bathrooms. With your high standard of professionalism, you are a credit to the Bay State Cleaning Company. You can be sure I'll be giving your team an excellent report.”

Her magnificent brown eyes have widened considerably. She's shocked, disturbed, flattered, delighted. She thanks me sincerely, letting a few toilet paper rolls fall off the carton in her excitement. I pick them up, balance them on top of the carton again.

“Carry on with the good work, miss,” I say.

The moonless night is a relief after the building's manic fluorescence. The van and the two cars I saw before are still in the parking lot. I'm jogging to the dark corner that leads to the service road when I see another car, a red Honda CRV, that I'm pretty sure wasn't there before.

It's got to be Larry Wozniak's. I go over to take a look. The passenger door is unlocked, so I slip into the seat before I even know what I'm doing. Then I realize where my instinct is taking me. His car registration will give his real name.

The glove compartment is locked.

I try it several times, in case it's merely stuck. My frustration mounts. I feel like smashing the lock with something blunt, but I probably wouldn't have much luck. There's a waver of light in my peripheral vision. It's Wozniak crossing in front of the floodlight, making his way to his car. If I get out now, he'll see me. I dive into the backseat, try to lie down across the floor. First I have to push aside a pair of muddy hiking boots and some empty water bottles and Dunkin' Donuts coffee cups. The backseat is covered with folded maps and rolled nautical charts. There's also a small cooler and an alpine anorak. I feel like I've stumbled into a Boy Scout den. I quickly pull the anorak over me.

The thud of hard, fast footsteps heads toward the car. Wozniak gets in and sparks the engine. We do a one-eighty; the tires bump woozily across some broken pavement by the gate. He drives pretty fast—at least it feels that way to me—along the wide avenue that leads away from Ocean Catch.

From the change in the floor vibrations and the humming of metal, I can tell when we cross a bridge. Pretty soon we're taking a left. What street is this? I can't be sure. He puts on the radio and starts humming along to a Stevie Nicks tune. At one point he actually sings, not quite in tune. Given the hiking boots and maps, I'm starting to worry that this trip may be a long one. Out to some godforsaken suburb or, worse, the country. I'd hate to end up in a place where a person can't hail a cab.

“Shit,” he says suddenly and emphatically. “Damn it, get off my ass.” I feel the car brake, then speed up again. Brake, and speed up. He's being tailgated and, as some males are wont to do, is perversely trying to make a point. I take the anorak off my face and see headlights bouncing on the ceiling of the car and across the backs of the front seats. The car behind isn't backing off. Now the hum of a passing car makes me wonder why so many people are driving around the usually deserted waterfront district at this time of night.