Sarah Andrews - In Cold Pursuit

He turned and looked out the window toward the ice runway, taking in the view of neatly parked aircraft and distant mountains. He liked his life tidy. Valena’s visit had been as wild as… If she ran in here and knocked what I’m working on here onto the floor, scattering all the little clips and fittings, that would not have been quite as disruptive , he told himself. And yet he wanted her to come right back and do it again.

He shook himself, trying to knock loose the urges that were running up and down his body. It’s one thing when I hug her , he decided, but when she threw that one on me…

I’m almost old enough to be her father, for Christ’s sake!

Michael , he told himself, you thought you could hide out here in Antarctica, but for all the scarcity of people, it’s wound up being more intimate than any place you’ve ever been, and it’s telling you something: you’ve been alone too long!

He hopped off his stool.

Quickly, he turned off his oscilloscope and unplugged his soldering iron, then grabbed his parka from its hook on the back of the door, switched off the lights, locked the door behind him, and headed up the ramp. Maybe she’s still there , he told himself. Please, let her still be there.

He took the ramp in long, hearty strides, and at the top, turned right. Ah, good, her door is open! He closed the distance quickly and burst through into Brenda Utzon’s office. She was sitting at her desk. She smiled tentatively when she saw him. The little crow’s feet around her eyes and the first few gray hairs on her head looked dear, and very, very welcome. “Brenda,” he said. “I was wondering if you were on your way to dinner. Would you join me?”

Her smile broadened, and a bright light came into her eyes. They were lavender, he noticed. Why had he never seen that before?

A snorting sound from the farthest desk in the room alerted him to the fact that they were not alone. He looked up and only then saw that Doris was at her desk, leaning forward into her laptop computer. She was fighting back a hearty smirk. To hell with you , he thought merrily, I’ve finally made my move.

Turning his attention back to Brenda, he waited confidently for her answer.

“Sure,” she said, moving her mouse around to close down her computer for the night. “I’d be delighted.”

“MAC OPS, MAC OPS, THIS IS CAPE ROYDS,” CAME THE call.

The woman on shift at Mac Ops reached for the microphone. “Mac Ops,” she replied.

“Hey, I need you to pass a message for me,” said Nat, his voice garbled by the radio and the wind.

“Standing by for message. Over.”

A second voice, this one with a New Zealand accent, came over the air. “Hi there, Mac Ops! We’ve been having a little cocktail hour up here in Nat’s tent, and… over.”

“What’s your message?” she asked.

“Tell Bellamy I think whoever pinched the penguin eggs also stole some artifacts,” Nat said. “We need to have a council of war on this.”

The New Zealander added, “And tell him that if he’s coming out here tomorrow, he should see if that girl who worked for Emmett Vanderzee still wants to join us. Nat says she’s kind of cute. Oh… over.”

“Mac Ops copies. You boys behave yourselves. Over.”

She could hear a sea chantey being sung in the background as Nat toggled his mike one more time to say, “Royds over and out. Oh, and we’re doing fine, so don’t expect an eight p.m. check-in call.”

She said, “Mac Ops clear,” then switched off the microphone. She smiled, thinking what fun they were having out there. She knew the Kiwis had some good recipes for mixing Raro with various other beverages, but the sweetness in the mix made the drinks hit the brain even harder than it hit the liver.

She dialed George Bellamy’s phone number, knowing that he had already left his office, so when it rolled over to his assistant’s answering machine, she left the message there, not knowing that that woman had gone to her dorm room with a fever and would not find the message for two days. Then she sat back and tried to reason out how to reach “that girl who works for Emmett Vanderzee.” She felt sorry for Valena. She had really gotten hosed, coming all the way down here only to find that her professor was gone. Maybe there was something she could do to help, if only to tell her to watch out for inebriated Kiwis.

JAMES SKEHAN SIGNALED FOR VALENA TO FOLLOW HIM and led her up the ramp. His stride was long and he moved quickly. He opened the door to the stairwell and took the steps up toward the library two at a time. “Come on, hustle!” he told her. “We’ve got people waiting!” Once inside the library, he headed toward a group of people who sat drinking coffee on a cluster of couches arranged in a semicircle. Changing swiftly to a more congenial tone, he said, “Hey, everybody, I’ve found someone else to join our little party. Valena, I think you’ve met a few of these people. Kathy Juneau is a biologist, and Ted is a blaster. I think you’ve also met our own dear Cupcake and Cal Hart. We also have Julia Rosserman, geology; Ken Phelps, atmospheric science; Bill Williams, glaciologist.”

Valena did her best to look calm and collected. “Um, yeah. Kathy, nice to see you again. Cupcake? Cal?” she said, wondering why Cal was there. Hadn’t he been scheduled to fly north?

“Sit down, Valena,” Skehan said. “We’re all just having a little chat about what happened to Emmett. We’re rather concerned.”

Valena lowered herself onto the couch. Skehan’s trying to sound casual, but he’s wound up tighter than a watch spring , thought Valena, recalling one of her grandfather’s aphorisms. It was becoming an anachronistic aphorism, because now most watches ran on batteries. Of course, if I’m going to be anachronistic, it might as well be over a timepiece , she decided, then realized, I’m starting to dissociate, focusing on the details instead of the way they fit together. This is not good. Something’s wrong here. Why is Cal still here? I though he was scheduled on the flight out yesterday.

The man named Phelps sat with his shoulders held as high as Ed Sullivan’s. His skinny knees jiggled inside his baggy chinos.

Skehan said, “What went down out on the ice with the man from Fleet Ops really troubles me.”

Kathy Juneau tapped her pen against the pad of paper on her clipboard. “I’ll bet I’m not the only one who wonders if there’s a connection between what happened to Steve and what happened to that man in Emmett’s camp last year. I wish to hell we could get a flight up there and have a look ourselves.”

“That occurred to me, too,” said Cal. He sat sprawled back in his couch with both elbows over the back and one ankle crossed over the opposite knee.

Valena’s brain was running at high speed, picking up every detail and plugging it into position on a game board of infinite dimensions. Should I tell them everything I know? No, because the Airlift Wing could get in a world of trouble.

It occurred to her to wonder why they were including her in this gathering. Do they know that I was investigating this problem myself? But I’m done now. They can have it! And don’t they know that I’m being sent home on the next plane? She turned and looked at Cupcake. “What have you told them?” she whispered.

“Nothing.”

“What’s that, Valena?” Kathy inquired.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing substantive or nothing at all?” asked Skehan.

She fidgeted with the zipper on her big red parka. “Nothing of much note,” she said cautiously.

Cal said, “You were on the traverse with two other people who were in Emmett’s camp. What did they tell you?”