Lincoln Child - Terminal Freeze

“I’ve spoken to my colleagues. And I’m convinced that none of them had anything to do with the cat going missing.” This was mostly true: Barbour had almost bitten his head off when he’d asked if she knew what happened to the cat, and if Faraday was responsible he wouldn’t be in his lab now, studying its disappearance. Marshall still hadn’t found Sully-and the climatologist had been acting a little strange-but Sully surely couldn’t have acted alone.

Conti didn’t answer, and Marshall continued. “Furthermore, I find your bullying tactics and intimidation insulting. And this insistence that somebody sabotaged your show-that there’s some conspiracy to force you into leaving the site-borders on the paranoid. Go ahead and make your revised documentary if it will help soothe your vanity. But if you say, or intimate, or allege anything about me or my colleagues that in any way deviates from pure fact, you and Terra Prime can expect to hear immediately from a large and very angry group of lawyers.”

“All right,” said Wolff. “You’ve made your point.”

Marshall didn’t reply. He looked from Conti to Wolff and back again. He realized his heart was hammering and he was breathing hard.

Wolff continued to look at him. “Now if there’s nothing else, would you mind leaving?”

Marshall returned his gaze to Conti. At last the director looked up at him, nodded almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t even clear whether he’d heard a single word of the exchange.

It seemed there was nothing else to say. Marshall glanced at Barbour, gestured toward the door.

“Aren’t you going to tell them?” Ekberg asked, very quietly.

Marshall looked at her. The field producer was looking from Conti to Wolff, a haunted expression on her face.

“Tell us what?” Marshall asked.

Wolff frowned, made a small suppressing gesture.

“You can’t keep it secret,” Ekberg said, her voice louder now, more self-assured. “If you don’t tell them, I will.”

“Tell us what?” Marshall asked.

There was a brief silence. Then Ekberg turned toward him. “Josh Peters. One of our PAs, assistant to the supervising editor. He was found outside the security fence ten minutes ago. Dead.”

Shock lanced through Marshall. “Frozen?”

At this, Conti at last roused himself. “Torn apart,” he said.

The Fear Base infirmary, a confusing, claustrophobic network of small gray rooms, was located deep in the south wing military quarters. Marshall had been here only once before, for a butterfly bandage and a tetanus booster after gashing his arm on a rusty fairing. Like most of the base, the place looked like something out of an old movie set. Ancient inoculation schedules and posters warning against lice and athlete’s foot were pinned to the walls. Half a dozen fresh bottles of Betadine and hydrogen peroxide had been hastily stored in glass-fronted cabinets beside ancient, semi-fossilized beakers of iodine and rubbing alcohol. And over everything lay a faint shabbiness that clung to the fixtures and furniture almost like a coating of dust.

Marshall glanced around. The space that had once served as office-cum-waiting room was full of people-Wolff, Conti, Ekberg, Gonzalez, the carrot-haired PFC named Phillips-making the cramped space feel even more confined. Sully had finally turned up-he had, he said, been studying weather data tables in a remote lab-along with the gloomy news that the current blizzard wasn’t due to abate for forty-eight hours. He was standing in a far corner, his flushed face agitated. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to look through the open doorway to the south. The space beyond had once been an examining room. Now it was a makeshift morgue.

Sergeant Gonzalez was questioning the unlucky production assistant who had found the body: a gangly youth in his early twenties with a wispy goatee. Marshall knew nothing about him except that his name was Neiman.

“Did you see anybody else in the area?” Gonzalez asked.

Neiman shook his head. He had a dazed, glassy-eyed expression, as if he’d just been hit with a bat.

“What were you doing out there?”

Long silence. “It was my shift.”

“Shift for what?”

“To search for the missing cat.”

Gonzalez rolled his eyes, turned angrily toward Wolff. “Is that still going on?”

Wolff shook his head.

“Good thing, or I’d have ordered you to call it off. If you hadn’t sent your people off on a wild-goose chase, Peters would still be alive.”

“You don’t know that,” Wolff replied.

“Of course I know that. Peters wouldn’t have been outside. He wouldn’t have encountered a polar bear.”

“You’re assuming something,” Wolff said.

Gonzalez glared at him.

“You’re assuming it’s a polar bear. This man could have been murdered.”

Gonzalez sighed in disgust, and-disdaining to answer-returned his attention to Neiman. “Did you hear anything? See anything?”

Neiman shook his head. “Nothing. Just blood. Blood everywhere.” He looked as if he was going to be sick.

“All right. That’s enough for now.”

“Who transported the body here?” Marshall asked Gonzalez.

“I did. Along with Private Fluke.”

“Where’s Fluke?”

“In his bunk. He isn’t feeling so hot at the moment.” The sergeant nodded to Phillips. “Why don’t you escort Mr. Neiman back to his quarters?”

Ekberg came forward. “I’ll go with you.”

“Don’t speak of this to the others,” Wolff said. “Not quite yet.”

Ekberg looked at him. “I have to.”

“It will just cause needless anxiety,” Wolff told her.

“What will cause anxiety is rumor and gossip,” she replied. “Which is spreading already.”

“She’s right,” Gonzalez said. “It’s better if people are told.”

Wolff looked at the two of them in turn. “Very well. But play down the degree of the injuries.”

“And warn everyone to stay indoors,” Gonzalez added.

Ekberg walked out, following Neiman and Private Phillips. As he watched her go, Marshall observed that a change had come over her. Until now, she had always been very deferential to Conti and Wolff. But in the wake of Peters’s death, she seemed different. Not only had she broken rank with her bosses to inform the scientists of the killing but now she was openly challenging their orders.

He realized that Wolff was staring at him. “What is it?” he asked.

“As long as you’re here, are you going to take a look?”

“A look?” Marshall repeated.

“You’re a biologist, aren’t you?”

Marshall hesitated. “Paleoecologist.”

“Close enough. Until the storm clears and we can get a plane up here, we’re going to place the body in cold storage. But first, why don’t you examine it and give us your conclusions.”

“I’m no pathologist. And I don’t have a medical degree. You should get Faraday down here-at least he’s a biologist.”

Wolff shifted. “I’m not asking for an autopsy. I just want you to examine the wounds and give us your opinion.”

“Opinion of what?” Sully chimed in, speaking for the first time.

“Whether they could have been inflicted by a human.”

Gonzalez frowned in irritation. “That’s a waste of time. We know a polar bear did this.”

“We know no such thing. Anyway, Peters was a Terra Prime employee-it’s our call to make.” Wolff looked searchingly at Marshall. “We’re all trapped up here-for several more days, at least. If there’s a sociopath in our midst, don’t you think we need to know-for our own safety?”

Marshall glanced toward the open door. He was hugely reluctant to step through it and confront what lay within. But he was also aware of the four pairs of eyes focused on him.