The Arctic Event (21 page)

“The doctor must have told you that,” Kropodkin said around a mouthful of bread and margarine.

“He did. He also said you were a top-flight student and a very capable individual. That’s how you got the posting to this expedition.” Randi leaned forward in her chair. “Now, let’s get on to what you say. You say you were on a science party with two other members of your expedition, the doctors Gupta and Hasegawa, when suddenly the two of them disappeared. You came back here and reported their disappearance. Then you went out on the search party with Dr. Creston and Ian Rutherford. You went out onto the pack ice while searching; then Creston and Rutherford vanished as well. You were trapped on the ice by an opening water lead. You just happened to be the man with the shotgun, and you just happened to fire two shots from it.

“You were stuck out there for almost two full nights; then the ice leads closed and you made it back to camp only an hour or so ago. You have no idea what happened to Gupta, Hasegawa, Creston, or Rutherford, and you have no idea who may have killed Kayla Brown here at the camp. Is this essentially your story?”

“Yes, because that is the truth,” Kropodkin replied sullenly, after taking a gulp of tea.

“No, it isn’t,” Randi said matter-of-factly. “You’re a liar, and a murderer and probably a number of other unsavory things that we’ll find out about.”

She rose slowly out of her chair. “To begin with, your name isn’t Stefan Kropodkin. I’m not sure what it really is, but it doesn’t matter. There are other people tearing your fake past apart right now, and they’ll find out. They’ll also learn about the Middle European ‘businessmen’ who are sponsoring your education. That should prove interesting as well.”

Kropodkin stared at her warily, the tip of his tongue moving along his chapped lips.

“I suspect you came to Canada, the university, and Wednesday Island for reasons other than higher learning,” Randi continued, pacing slowly between the mess table and the cooking counter. “The collegiate ivory towers might make a convenient hideout for a man on the run. It’s the kind of place the police or the security services wouldn’t look, granted you kept your nose out of the conventional campus radical groups. As I said, we’ll learn more about that later.

“But you still wanted to have a secure mode of communications with your backers while you were laying low, just in case. That’s why you brought this with you.”

Randi slipped one hand into the pocket of her ski pants and produced the transparent plastic evidence envelope that contained the mini hard drive. “I found this where you’d hidden it in the radio shack. The correspondence files on it should be very interesting. I’ll also bet you were sloppy enough to leave fingerprints.”

Randi returned the hard drive to her pocket. “I’ll also wager you were curious enough to make a private visit to the Misha 124 crash site. My friends who are up there now will find out about that. Maybe it was pure curiosity, or maybe you caught the scent of something when your expedition was warned away from the wreck. Be that as it may, you went aboard that old plane and you found out what it was carrying. You recognized that the biowarfare agent aboard the bomber would be worth several fortunes to the right parties, and somehow you knew how to contact those right parties.”

Kropodkin had forgotten about his food.

“You told them about the anthrax, and they cut you in on the deal. You were to be their point man on Wednesday. You were designated to eliminate the other members of the expedition, securing access to the anthrax before the arrival of your partners!”

“I deny this!” the Slav exploded.

Randi took a step toward the mess table. “Deny away, but it is the truth. Your new partners weren’t quite in position to make the collection yet, but the expedition’s extraction ship and the crash site assessment team were on the way. You had no choice but to start the eliminations! You had to thin down the number of witnesses on Wednesday before the odds got worse!”

Her words flowed, precise, steady, and cold, accusing and then supporting each accusation, a prosecutor closing in for the kill. “So while you were out there on the ice with Gupta and Hasegawa you murdered them and hid their bodies. Then you came back here with a story about their disappearance. And when the search party set out after them, you made sure you were carrying the only gun on the island. You led Rutherford and Creston out into the middle of nowhere and you blew them away with two of the shells that were in that gun!”

Kropodkin was crushing the chunk of bread in his hand, the crumbs and margarine squeezing out between his fingers.

“Then you came back here for Kayla Brown, and when you scoped out the camp you found her in the lab building sitting beside a live radio, talking with the
Haley.
A complication. You had to disable the radio first so she couldn’t say anything she shouldn’t. But you managed that and then you went in after her and you took her up on that hill and you bashed her brains out with your ice axe.”

Randi tapped the tabletop with the muzzle of the MP-5. “Then you came back to the bunkhouse and you sat down at this table and fixed yourself a sandwich. Corned beef, plenty of mustard.

“But your snack was interrupted by the arrival of our helicopter, and you had to take off. You’ve been out there all afternoon, keeping an eye on us. You watched my friends leave for the crash site and you watched us turn in for the night. Then you crawled out of your hole and you came down to this hut with the intent of axing Dr. Trowbridge and me to death in our beds.”

Trowbridge stared at Kropodkin as if he had suddenly sprouted horns. “You have no proof!” Trowbridge croaked weakly, not wanting to hear any more. He could not have been so wrong. He could not have sat across a desk from such a monster.

“Oh, I have proof, Doctor,” Randi replied so softly that both men had to keep silent to hear her. “For one, let’s consider the state the laboratory hut and radio room were in when we found them. Totally undamaged. There was no sign of a struggle. No resistance at all. Then let’s consider the state of Kayla Brown’s body. She was fully dressed in all her cold weather clothing. She had been allowed to gear up and leave that hut under controlled circumstances when she started up that hill. There was no indication of haste, of flight. No indication of panic. In short, she was not frightened.”

Randi glanced at Trowbridge. “You were in the radio shack aboard the cutter that last night, Doctor. We were talking with one very nervous and upset young woman. She knew something was very wrong on this island. I doubt she would have left the lab hut on her own, and I very much doubt she would have left so casually with a stranger. I suspect she was with someone she knew and trusted. Someone she saw as a friend. Him.”

The MP-5 barrel gestured toward Kropodkin.

“No,” the Slovakian gritted.

Randi moved to the edge of the mess table, immediately across from Kropodkin. “Then we come to his story about being stuck out on that ice flow. It’s a total fabrication. He wasn’t starving for two nights running. He was forted up somewhere, chewing on the emergency rations from the survival pack the rescue party had taken with them.”

“How can you possibly know?” Dr. Trowbridge whispered, intrigued in spite of himself.

“His atrocious table manners,” Randi replied. “Have you ever had to go hungry, Doctor? Really hungry? Several days worth of hungry in a hostile environment? I have, on several occasions. When you finally get a chance at a meal, you don’t bolt your food like this gentleman did. You don’t eat like you’re just hungry. You eat like food is the most wonderful experience in the world. You eat slowly, getting the most out of each mouthful. Personal experience.

“And while we’re on the subject of food...” Randi leaned forward across the table. “When we came into this hut, we found the half-eaten meal Mr. Kropodkin had left on the table. That corned beef sandwich and tea, hot tea.”

Hate glittered in the look Kropodkin aimed up at her. “It was not mine!” he spat.

“Oh, yes, it was.” Randi’s voice was almost hypnotic. “There was something a little bit different about the way that tea had been served. You see, it was in a glass. Now, we had a group of Anglo-Saxons, a couple of Asians, and one Slav on this island. When someone of Anglo-Saxon or Asian cultural descent makes hot tea, he or she drinks it from a cup or a mug, automatically, as a cultural norm. Only an Arab or a Slav would drink hot tea from a glass...” The barrel of the submachine gun swung across the table and lightly tapped the rim of the steaming glass at Kropodkin’s side, producing a clear ringing
ting
. “And there aren’t any Arabs on this island.”

Kropodkin grabbed for the inviting gun barrel. Randi, who had been expecting and waiting for the desperation move, yanked the submachine gun back, then smashed the muzzle full into Kropodkin’s face, hurling him backward off the bench.

Screaming a curse, Kropodkin scrambled to his feet, but Randi had already rolled over the tabletop, confronting him before he could recover. To a flabbergasted Dr. Trowbridge, she moved in a golden-haired blur. Three blows were landed with the submachine gun within two seconds; a two-handed horizontal strike across the forehead with the receiver, another savage punch in the groin with the muzzle, and a final butt stroke across the back of the neck as Kropodkin folded over in agony. Randi was careful to pull the finishing blow so it would not quite fracture the spine.

Kropodkin dropped like a dynamited bridge.

Dropping to her knees beside the Slovakian, Randi first checked his breathing, then yanked his arms behind his back, applying a fresh set of disposacuffs.

“Help me get him back onto the bunk, please, Doctor.”

Trowbridge just stared down at her and at the graduate student, sprawled bloody-faced on the floor.

“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that anyone could kill so many people so casually.”

“There are more of them around than you might expect, Doctor.” Randi rubbed her eyes, suddenly very tired. “You’ve been sitting in a room with two of them.”

Chapter Thirty

The Misha Crash Site

Gradually Jon Smith became aware of dawn growing beyond the overhead astrodome. He also became aware of an imbalance in the warmth surrounding him, a comfortable emphasis favoring his left side. Then came a very definite snuggle.

The congealed frost of his breath rasped on the cover of his Jaeger sleeping bag as Smith lifted his head to look around the radar-observer cabin. A second occupied Jaeger bag was nestled firmly against his. Valentina Metrace, in her catlike connoisseurship of comfort, had burrowed close in the night.

Smith couldn’t help but cock an eyebrow. Randi had been right. Where there was a will, there was most certainly a way.

Female companionship had not been a major factor in Smith’s life for some time. At first, in the direct aftermath of Sophia’s death, the concept had been too painful, too much a breaking of a faith. Then, afterward, emotional relationships had seemed an added complication in an already overly complex life. But now this particular female seemed to be making it clear in a hundred subtle and not so subtle ways that she intended to make herself a factor.

Exactly why was beyond Smith’s comprehension. He had always viewed himself as a fairly prosaic individual. Any romance that might cling to him was only a reflection of his careers, and likely a misunderstood one at that. He had always felt very fortunate to have gained the love of one beautiful and intelligent woman. To have this second bold, enigmatic and decidedly attractive female move deliberately into his orbit was an unexpected phenomenon.

He felt Valentina’s head lift, and she shook free of her sleeping bag’s hood and face flap, peering into his face from a range of a few inches. “I would cheerfully and without a moment’s hesitation kill,” she murmured, “for a long, hot soak in a bathtub, and a change of lingerie.”

“I could loan you a spare disinfectant towelette,” he replied.

“Your counteroffers are growing steadily more pathetic, but I suppose I’m stuck with it.”

She rested her head on his shoulder, and for a few moments they lay together in the bizarre little pocket of intimacy they had found on the ice-slickened deck of the ancient bomber. The wind outside had subsided to only the faintest intermittent whisper. In the crew’s cabin aft, they could hear Gregori Smyslov snoring softly in his bunk.

The night before, Smith had been careful in the way he had arranged their gear to make sleeping room on the deck. He’d propped his loaded packframe in the hatchway between the compartments, stacking his snowshoes atop them, rendering a silent access to the radar-observer space impossible. The necessity of that action and the angular feel of his sidearm under the wadded bulk of his parka pillow pushed his momentary nonprofessional musing about Valentina Metrace into abeyance.

“What is it, Val?” he said under his breath. “What are the Russians hiding? You have some ideas, don’t you?”

She hesitated; then he felt the shake of her head, her soft hair brushing his chin. “Not that I’m prepared to say, Jon. The historian in me is appalled by the concept of providing poor history, and the spy, of giving poor intelligence. But we’ve got to find the survival camp. If there are any absolute answers to be found, we’ll find them there.”

“I can understand that. But that’s only one set of answers. The Russians are only one factor of what I’m coming to see as a three-point equation. The other two points are who is on the island now and who may be coming for the anthrax. I left Randi hanging back there as bait for whoever may be here now.”

“Shouldn’t worry, Jon. Anyone who endeavors to gulp down our Ms. Russell is going to find himself gagging on her...and I mean that in the best of possible connotations.”

“I know. She can take care of herself.”

“But you’ll still blame yourself if anything happens to her. As you still do for the deaths of her sister and her fiancé.”

Smith scowled down at the top of her head. “How the hell did you know about that?”

“Randi and I discussed you rather intensively one evening,” Valentina replied. “A species of girl talk. I’ve also studied you for a bit, and I’ve come to certain conclusions of my own. You’re one of those poor bastards stuck in the middle—tough enough to make the blood decisions, but with enough humanity left for it to gnaw at you. It’s a difficult balance to maintain. That makes you rare and worth keeping. That’s why, in due course, we’re going to become lovers.”

Smith couldn’t prevent the soft bark of laughter that escaped him. He had wondered, and he had been given an answer. “I see. Don’t I have any say in the matter?”

Valentina nestled contentedly again, tucking her head in under his chin. “No, not really. Don’t bother yourself about it now, Jon. I’ll handle all the details.”

She had to be joking in her usual quirky manner. But there was something about the calm woman’s surety in her voice that didn’t seem to apply to that scenario. He couldn’t help but recall the last lingering warmth of her lips on his yesterday, and he had a sudden urge to experience that warmth again.

Then the muzzy grumble and stirring of Major Smyslov in the next compartment broke the fragile bubble and returned them to the bleak reality of Wednesday Island.

It was a pale gray world atop the saddleback glacier. The dully luminous cloud cover hid the tops of the peaks and faded the horizons to the north and south into a vague nonvisibility. The surface snow and ice had been infected by the grayness as well, losing their luster. Only the dark exposed rock of the mountain flanks stood out, extruding from the dingy-paper whiteness with an exaggerated three-dimensionality. The immediate visibility around the downed bomber and the three human flyspecks standing beside it was good, yet it was difficult to truly see. Amid the blanched contrasts it was hard to gauge sizes and distances, and something akin to vertigo intermittently tugged at the consciousness.

Jon Smith felt the effect as he panned his binoculars in their instinctive slow circle, seeing nothing either desired or unwanted.

“All right, lady and gentleman, where are they?” he asked. “Where did they go after the crash?”

“I would say down the coast, Colonel,” Smyslov replied swiftly. “They would need food, and there is nothing to be had here. Along the coast there would be seals and bears. There would also be better opportunities for shelter. The weather up here on the glacier would be too bad.”

Valentina shook her hooded head. “No, I disagree, Gregori. They made their survival camp up here, probably within sight of this aircraft.”

“If they did, it’s pretty well hidden.” Smith returned his binoculars to their case. “And the major makes a pretty good case about the food. What brings you to your conclusion, Val?”

“A number of things,” she replied. “For one, the stripped state of the aircraft. It would take a lot of work and a lot of trips to move all of that material out of the wreck. They wouldn’t have carried it far. For another, they wouldn’t be immediately concerned about food. They would have had emergency rations for at least a couple of weeks, and they weren’t planning to stay around for that long.”

“Would they have had much choice?”

“They thought so, Jon. These people were not planning on setting up housekeeping. They intended to go home. Remember how they pulled the radio and radar systems out of the plane, as well as the auxiliary power unit? They had all of the components and expertise they needed to build one hellaciously powerful radio transmitter, one that could reach halfway around the world, and certainly back to Russia. That’s another reason they’d want to stay up here. The higher elevation would increase their broadcast and reception range.”

“Then why didn’t they use it?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know.” Smith could feel the words the historian didn’t want to speak aloud. He turned toward Smyslov. “What do you think, Major?”

The Russian shook his head. “I must disagree, Colonel. If they had built such a radio, they would have called for rescue. Obviously they did not.”

Whoever had chosen Gregori Smyslov had made one critical error with the man. He could lie well with his mouth, but not with his eyes or body language. The Russian’s words only emphasized a subtle change that had crept into the team’s dynamics overnight. Once more it had become an us-versus-them scenario, with Smyslov standing alone.

And yet, Smith pondered, if it was an us-versus-them, why hadn’t Smyslov simply allowed him to suffocate in the bomb bay the previous afternoon? He’d had a blank check to kill.

“We’ve got to find out which one of you is right, and fast,” Smith continued. “We know the anthrax is in the wreck. We know that someone else positively knows about it. We must assume these individuals are en route to collect it. Given that the hostiles have gone active on the island, we must also assume that we may have only hours before their main body arrives.”

Smyslov spoke up sharply. “Colonel, given the situation, should not we immediately return to the base camp? Our priority must be to resume contact with our superiors.”

There could be no doubt about it. Smyslov wanted not to find that survival camp as urgently as Valentina wanted to locate it, and probably for the same reason.

“A valid point, Major, but we will still make a sweep up here for the aircrew’s survival camp.” Smith extended his hand and swept it from north to south, covering the eastern edge of the glacier. “Granted that Professor Metrace is correct, the crew’s best bet for finding shelter should be along there, the base of East Peak.”

“The camp may have been well drifted over during the last fifty years,” Valentina added, slinging the model 70 over her shoulder. “So I’d suggest watching for shapes, especially straight linear ones, under the surface of the snow.”

“Got it. Any other questions? Okay, let’s move out.” Smith kept his own rifle cradled in his arms as they started the trudge across the ice.

Smith worked to the north, angling across the saddleback to the point where the glacier broke into a wicked blocky tumble of shattered ice, a miniature Beardmore that slumped down the front face of the island to the narrow coastal strip. From that point, according to the plan, they swept back across the gap. Advancing line abreast at twenty-yard intervals, they scouted the broken stone and ice interface along the base of the eastern peak.

Valentina kept to the inside slot, ranging along the bottom of the slope with the eager intensity of a hunting bird dog. Smith took the center point in the line while Smyslov stayed on the outer flank. In addition to watching the glacial surface, Smith found himself covering Val as she worked and eyeing the mountain slopes above for a variety of potential threats: snow cornices, avalanche chutes, and the possibility of camouflaged observers.

He also found himself intermittently watching Gregori Smyslov out of the corner of his eye. Was the Russian looking for something else beyond the remains of the lost aircrew? Who was he waiting for, and what would be the key that would trigger him into action? And what would that action be?

They passed the crash site and climbed the last hundred gently sloping yards to the central ridge of the saddleback. Smith paused for a moment in his trudging advance to survey the greater world.

The sea smoke was closing in around Wednesday once more, the mists lapping at the island’s flanks, killing the horizons and enhancing the unworldly sense of isolation. For a moment the saddleback was a literal island in the sky, sandwiched in a layer of clarity between the fog and the overcast. How long it would last was questionable.

It didn’t really matter. Soon they must break off the search and head back for the station. And maybe just as well. If Val was right, locating the camp of the downed aircrew might be the activation point of the Russian alternate agenda. Maybe it would be wiser to eat this apple one bite at a time, keeping Smyslov as an ally. Deal with the anthrax question first; then force the confrontation.

Smith turned and then stumbled as his right crampon snagged momentarily. Automatically he glanced down at the obstruction.

The spiked toe of his arctic boot had kicked up and exposed a short length of wire, its black insulation crumbling with age and cold.

Smith hesitated for one moment more. It would be easy enough to scrape a boot edge of snow over it and just keep going. But then, not knowing had been at the heart of this crisis from the beginning. Deliberately courting ignorance now simply didn’t make sense. Smith shifted his rifle to his left hand and lifted the right over his head, the fist clinched in the rally signal.

“It’s Soviet,” Smyslov confirmed, kneeling beside the exposed wire. “A trailing antenna. The kind that could be streamed behind an aircraft for long-range communications.”

“Laying an insulated aerial across the ice has been a communications expedient used in polar environments before,” Valentina confirmed.

“But where is the radio set?” Smyslov asked, getting back to his feet. “Where is the camp? There is nothing, only the wire.”

“The easiest way to resolve that question is to follow it.” Smith pointed toward the base of east peak. “Thataway.”

The antenna had melted into the frozen surface like a thread across an ice cube, but the incessant scouring of the winds had kept it buried only a few inches deep. Exposing the antenna as they went, they found that it swept in a shallow curve, having drifted with the flow of the glacier. At one point stress had snapped the thin wire, but the broken end was located only a few feet away. Surprisingly it led toward an almost sheer blank-faced wall of basalt rock, vanishing into the shoulder-high drift of hard-packed snow at its base.

“What the hell?”

Undaunted, Valentina Metrace unslung her pack and rifle and drew her belt knife. Dropping to her knees, she began to tunnel into the drift like an industrious badger. After a moment Smith and Smyslov joined her.

It swiftly became apparent that the drifted snow was packed into an overhang in the black rock, a groove rasped into the side of the mountain by the incessant sawing drag of the glacier. And then Smith noticed the texture of the snow changing. It was growing more solid, and it was as if a pattern had been worked into it.