James Cobb - The Arctic Event

“How does the route ahead look, Colonel?” Smyslov asked.

“Not bad if this map’s any indication.” Smith passed the photo chart down to the Russian. “This ledge we’ve been following seems to keep going for another half mile or so. At its end we can drop down into the glacier. We might need to do some rope work, but it shouldn’t be too bad. The crash site’s almost at the foot of the east peak, about a mile, mile and a quarter across the ice. With no hang-ups we should make it well before nightfall.”

He glanced at Metrace. She was sitting back against the rock wall, her eyes closed for the moment. “Holding up okay, Val?”

“Marvelous,” she replied, not opening her eyes. “Just assure me there’ll be a steaming bubbly spa, a roaring fireplace, and a quart of hot buttered rum waiting for me at our destination and I’ll be fine.”

“I’m afraid I can’t promise anything but a sleeping bag and a solid belt of some very good medicinal whisky in your MRE coffee.”

“A distant second, but acceptable.” She opened her eyes and looked back at him, a quizzical smile brushing her face. “I thought you medical types had decided that consuming ardent spirits in freezing weather was another biological no-no.”

“I’m not that healthy yet, Professor.”

Her smile deepened in approval. “There is hope for you yet, Colonel.”

Wednesday Island Station

“Shouldn’t you have a warrant or something?” Doctor Trowbridge asked suddenly.

Distracted, Randi looked up from the row of six identical Dell laptops on the laboratory worktable. “What?”

“These computers contain personal documents and information. Shouldn’t you have some kind of a warrant before you go rummaging around in them?”

Randi shrugged and turned back to the computers, tapping a series of on buttons. “Damned if I know, Doctor.”

“Well, you are a government…agent of some nature.”

“I don’t recall saying that.”

The six screens glowed, cycling through their start-up sequences. Of the six, only two demanded access code words: those belonging to Dr. Hasegawa and Stefan Kropodkin.

“Still, before I can allow you to violate the privacy of my expedition’s staff members there must be some kind of…”

Randi sighed, fixing a baleful gaze on Trowbridge. “First, Doctor, I don’t have anyplace to get a warrant from. Secondly, I don’t have anybody to give a warrant to, and finally, I don’t really give a shit! Okay?”

Trowbridge subsided in outraged bafflement for a moment, turning to stare out of the lab window.

Turning back to the computers, Randi methodically set to work, checked the four open systems first, skimming through the e-mail files and address lists. Nothing sprang out at her from the stored correspondence. Professional and personal business, letters from wives, families, and friends. The English boy, Ian, was apparently on very good terms with at least three different girlfriends, and the American girl, Kayla, was discussing a marriage with a fiancé.

No one seemed to be openly chatting up any known terrorist groups or exchanging missives with the Syrian Ministry of Defense. Which, of course, was meaningless. There were any number of covert contact and relay nodes for such organizations infesting the Internet, just as there were any number of simple transposition codes and tear-sheet ciphers that could be used to mask a covert communication. But these days there were better ways to go about things.

Randi moved on, cross-checking the control panels and programming screens and the memory reserves of the laptops. What she was looking for could be hidden, but it would also absorb a fair-sized chunk of hard drive space.

Again nothing sprang out at her. That left the locked-out laptops.

Getting up from the stool she had been using, she stretched for a moment and crossed to her pack that she had lugged in from the helicopter. Opening it, she took out a software wallet and removed a numbered compact disk. Returning to the laboratory table, she popped open the CD drive of the first locked computer and inserted the silvery disk.

The locked laptop made the error of checking the identification of the inserted disk, and in seconds the sophisticated NSA cracking program was raping its operating system. The desktop’s welcome screen came up, the system’s lockout protocols erased and supplanted.

Randi began to repeat the process with the second laptop. “Dr. Trowbridge, please don’t come up behind me like that,” she murmured, not taking her eyes from the screens. “It makes me nervous.”

“Excuse me,” he replied, his footsteps withdrawing toward the stool in the corner of the laboratory. “I was just thinking about going over to the bunkhouse for a cup of coffee.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. There’s a jar of instant coffee, some mugs, and a pot for heating water in the cupboard beside the coal stove.”

The academic’s voice grew heated as well. “So I gather I’m under suspicion of something as well?”

“Of course you are.”

“I do not understand any of this!” It was a vocal explosion.

God, and she didn’t have time for this! She spun around on the lab stool. “Neither do we, Doctor! That’s the problem! We don’t understand how word about the anthrax got off this island. Nor do we understand who may be coming for it. Until we do we are going to be as suspicious as hell of everybody! What you apparently don’t understand is that entire national populations can be at stake here!”

She turned back to the computers. There was a long silence from the far end of the lab, followed by the clatter of coffee paraphernalia.

Dr. Hasegawa used Japanese kanji script on her personal computer, and it wasn’t difficult to learn the great secret she was shyly locking away from the world. The female meteorologist was also a budding novelist. Randi, who was as capable in kanji as she was in several other languages, scanned a page or two of what was obviously a sweeping and rather sultry historical romance set in the days of the shogunate. Actually she’d read worse.

As for the computer of Stefan Kropodkin, he conveniently used English, and there was nothing out of the way on his system beyond a not excessive amount of downloaded cyber porn.

But there was one blip on his scope. Almost nothing in the way of personal e-mail traffic had been saved.

“Dr. Trowbridge, what do you know about Stefan Kropodkin?”

“Kropodkin? A brilliant young man. A physics major from McGill University.”

“That was in his file, along with the fact he holds a Slovakian passport and is in Canada on a student visa. Do you know anything about his family? Was any kind of a background check done on him?”

“What kind of a background check were we supposed to do?” Trowbridge swore softly as he struggled with the lid of the jar of powdered coffee. “This was a purely scientific research expedition. As for his family, he doesn’t have one. The boy is a refugee, a war orphan from the former Yugoslavia.”

“Really?” Randi sat back on her stool. “Then who is financing his education?”

“He’s on a scholarship.”

“What kind of a scholarship?”

Trowbridge spooned coffee crystals into his mug. “It was established by a group of concerned Middle European businessmen specifically for deserving refugee youth from the Balkan conflicts.”

“And let me guess: this scholarship was established shortly before Stefan Kropodkin applied for it, and so far, he’s the only deserving refugee youth to receive it.”

Trowbridge hesitated, his spoon poised over his steaming cup. “Well, yes. How did you know?”

“Call it a hunch.”