Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

“I don’t know what I can do to change that.”

“I’m trying to help my professor, Manny! And yes, I’m trying to help myself. If he returns, I stay. So tell me, please. Who was there? Who was in which tent?”

Manny looked up again. “So many questions! Okay. Okay, I’ve told this a thousand times to the FBI, but I’ll tell you, too. There were eight in camp. Emmett, me, the… dead man… the cook, the two grad students, Emmett’s assistant, the blaster’s assistant, and the other guy, the gopher. That was it.”

“The cook, is she here this year?”

“She’s out at Black Island.”

“Lindemann’s out in the Dry Valleys.”

“Yes,” he said, trying to sound patient. “He’s up on a glacier in the Olympus Range. I heard he got on with that crew from the University of Maine.”

“Why didn’t he stick with Emmett?”

“How should I know? Your academic politics. I stay out of that.”

“The blaster’s assistant? What was his name, David?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s around. There are probably a dozen Davids on the roster this year.”

“That last one. William somebody.”

“William was a punk kid. I doubt they hired him back.”

“A punk. What, as in homicidal?”

Manuel threw up his hands. “As in not very competent. Had to have everything explained to him. What he was doing in Antarctica, I’ll never know.”

“So, were you all in the same tent while you waited for the drop?”

“No. We had four Scotts and a cook tent. Most people hung out in the cook tent, because it was warmed by the stove, and it’s the largest—eight feet across and sixteen long. Scotts are tall, but not very big across, as you’ll remember from your training today. You can sleep three people in them, but two is better. I was in the cook tent with Sheila, helping her with the sick man. I think Bob and Dan were in their Scott tent most of the time.”

“Bob and Dan.”

“Schwartz and Lindemann. They have first names. Dave was with us most of the time in the cook tent. So was William, eating cookies. They shared a tent with Ted, but Ted had left. Cal Hart—that’s Emmett’s friend—he was in the tent he shared with Emmett, reading Nietzsche. I had a dome tent right next to Sheila’s Scott, but we were both in the cook tent that day. Emmett went from tent to tent, making sure everyone was okay.”

“How did Emmett get from one tent to the next?”

“They were close together. It was no more than a hundred feet from one end of the camp to the other. And we’d seen the storm coming, so I had strung ropes so we could find our ways from one tent to the next and to the latrine.”

“And Emmett went out in the storm looking for the chute?”

“As soon as he could see his hand in front of his face, yes. He took Cal with him. Safety in numbers. He wanted that man to live! I kept telling the FBI men that, but they believed what they wanted to believe. The chute was gone, I tell you! It probably blew into a crevasse and was immediately covered with blowing snow. I went out and helped as soon as it was safe. We all did. Then it began to blow again. We just weren’t lucky. End of story.”

More gently, Valena said, “I’m still trying to understand what it was like there, Manny. Since coming here, I’ve learned one thing, and that is that this place is like no other place on earth. Half the time, I feel like I’ve left the planet. I’m on Mars, or the moon. What was the camp like? How high were you? How steep was the terrain? That sort of thing.”

Manny leaned onto his elbows and ran his hands through his hair. “We were at 10,500 feet. Add to that the effects of the cold and of being five degrees further south than McMurdo. The higher latitude increases the apparent elevation. Call it 12,000 feet. And the ground is rough. It’s not so much how steep the terrain is, it’s the ice. Crevasses. You just don’t screw around up there. And then here’s the reporter, straight up from sea level. He looked okay for a day, almost two, then down he went.”

“And everybody’s certain it was altitude sickness.”

“What else would it be?”

“Something else, if federal agents are hauling scientists off the ice a year later.”

Manny shook his head. “The doctors here at the hospital looked at him, and you bet there was an autopsy. His lungs were full of fluid. No big bacterial or viral growths, so it wasn’t an infection. And there were no toxins in his tissues, so you can’t pin it on anything he ate. No punctures, no nothing.”

“They checked for punctures?”

“ I checked for punctures. We had a medical kit there. All the field crews carry one, very extensive, with some pretty heavy drugs in them, including for pneumonia—and yes, we were administering that drug—and we had it because you never know when somebody’s going to get sick when you can’t get them back out to McMurdo. So yes, I checked him over.”

“Why?”

Manny leaned back in his seat and bared his teeth in frustration. “Because there’d been such a commotion.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s no secret that the man fought… argued with Emmett. Nothing physical.”

“Argued about the science?”

“About everything. About Emmett’s techniques. About what was for dinner. The man had a real burr up his butt. He chewed at Emmett and a couple of the others, harassed them like there was no tomorrow.”

Valena sighed. “Apparently there was no tomorrow for him.”

Manuel squeezed his eyes shut.

Valena said, “I’m sorry, but I have just a few more questions. The feds: they came down this year and started asking questions. Why? Could you tell anything from what they asked?”

Manuel shook his head. “Talk to the fellows in the Airlift Wing. The feds arrived on one of their LC-130s. They asked a lot of questions. Then Emmett took them out to the field camp. They were gone six or seven hours, long enough to fly out there, stay a few hours, and come back.” He stared into space past Valena’s shoulder, as if watching the scene unfolding. “And when they came back, that was it. They had Emmett by the sleeve. I watched them come in off the ice. They marched him off to Hut 10. I hear they interrogated him all night and into the next morning. Nobody could believe it was happening. I went to the door of Hut 10 and was told to leave. Early afternoon the next day, they packed him into a Herc again, and were gone.” He swung his gaze to Valena, focused his eyes on hers. “That was Saturday.”

Valena thought a moment, then asked, “I’m sure there’s something else I should ask you, but I don’t know what it is. I know so little about this place.”

Manuel looked at her a long time, then said, “Ask yourself why he didn’t have a Gamow bag in camp. Why he had to send for one.”

“Who, Emmett?”

“Yes. It’s standard procedure to have one along.” Having said this, Manuel appeared to deflate, as if something that had been stiffening him had finally escaped. Then he said, “You want to know anything else, you’ll have to ask the Air-lift Wing personnel who went into the field with them.”

Personnel. Plural. Of course , thought Valena. There’s more than just a pilot on those planes, there’s a whole crew! “ Who else went out there with Emmett and the investigators?” she asked.

“I don’t know. There’d be a crew of at least five. Pilot, copilot, flight engineer, navigator, loadmaster. More, maybe. I don’t know that much about the military here. They stay kind of separate.”

You just have to go talk to them , she thought, but then she recalled the undecipherable look in Hugh’s eyes. Had he actually been giving her information, or had he just been toying with her?