Ice Age Page 3

  Morgan, a man almost as big as his deputy and given to college football profanity, said: ‘What in the name of Christ is it?’

  ‘A disease – or infection or virus or bacillus or maybe none of those things – that we’ve never encountered before and know nothing about,’ said Pelham, a declaration so helpfully dramatic that Spencer could have scripted it.

  ‘They’re completely isolated now?’ asked Morgan, eager to catch up.

  ‘The living and the dead,’ assured Spencer. Too theatrical, he criticized himself, objectively.

  ‘That’s how they’ve got to stay, until we discover what the hell’s going on,’ decided Morgan, believing he could identify Spencer’s manoeuvring. ‘Total black-out, absolute security …’ He looked at his deputy. ‘Your job, Paul. Personal control, hands on all the time …’ He extended his attention to the other two men. ‘We’re locking this up, totally out of sight, until we’ve got answers …’

  ‘We might have a problem there,’ encouraged Spencer, seeing the trap. ‘There’s a burned-out field base … everyone at McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott know something happened, if not precisely what. And satellite telephones that usually work as clear as a bell, as well as instant internet contact …’

  Morgan rose to his feet, to walk as he talked, another crisis indicator. ‘You’ve surely warned them?’ he demanded of Hoolihan.

  ‘Absolutely!’ said Hoolihan.

  ‘But I don’t think we can guarantee it,’ said Spencer. ‘We’re talking scientists, academics. Government employees, notionally, but not people as bound by regulations as the military who brought everyone out.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ asked Morgan, wishing he would be able to completely trust whatever answer he got.

  ‘I think we need some control down there, actually on the ground,’ said Spencer. ‘Some military restrictions, certainly on outside communication.’

  ‘I don’t believe scientists need to be put under quasi house arrest to guarantee the secrecy of something like this,’ said a professionally-offended Pelham, defensively.

  ‘I want you to get on to McMurdo again. Amundsen-Scott direct, if you think it’s necessary,’ Morgan told Hoolihan. ‘Tell them the level of the order. And that we’re sending down some military support …’

  ‘I’ll talk to the Pentagon,’ anticipated Spencer. He’d hooked Morgan into being a part of the cover-up, which was important.

  ‘What about the group who came back alive?’ said Pelham.

  The Chief of Staff appeared surprised. ‘It’s your installation. You should know more about your security than me!’

  ‘The McMurdo doctor, Neilson, keeps asking to speak to his wife,’ reminded Pelham.

  ‘He can’t: none of them are speaking to anyone outside the base,’ ordered Morgan.

  ‘Haven’t we got a civil liberties – a constitutional – problem here?’ persisted the Fort Detrick director. ‘And there are the relatives of the victims. What are they to be told?’

  The man was a politically-minded survivor, admired Spencer. Pelham was even covering his ass for the medically necessary quarantine separations he’d already imposed. And at the same time, concluded a more than satisfied Spencer, covering his ass as well.

  Morgan said: ‘You want me to spell out the legislation – quote the Congressional statute numbers – covering emergency measures ascribed to the Executive Office to ensure national security and the prevention of civil unrest, sir?’ The final word – sir – came like a punch.

  ‘I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings,’ said Pelham, unbruised.

  ‘You won’t be allowed any, as of now!’ declared Morgan. Tell me, in detail, what you are doing at Fort Detrick?’

  ‘Autopsies have already begun upon the dead. The woman, Jane Horrocks, was pregnant. The foetus will be removed from her body. Its organs, as well as those of the adults, will need to be subjected to a lot of tests –’ he looked to Spencer, ‘– as I’ve already warned Paul, it’ll take some time.’

  ‘What about those still alive?’

  ‘From the apparent speed of the ageing, there’ll be an indication within the next twenty-four hours if any of them have contracted it—’

  ‘What indications?’ interrupted Spencer, needing to get back into the conversation.

  Pelham frowned. ‘Externally, that which is most obvious in old age: in the pictures you’ve seen. Loss of skin elasticity: heavy wrinkling, liver spots. Hair seems to be greatly affected, from the condition of the dead. So is colour loss. Hair loss itself. As it progresses, degeneration of bone strength. Memory loss … Alzheimer’s …’

  ‘They’ve been at Detrick for twelve hours!’ challenged Morgan. ‘Nothing external yet?’

  ‘Nine and a half,’ qualified Pelham, looking pointedly at his watch. ‘Before which they’d gone through the severe trauma of discovery, brought out the bodies, and flown non-stop, apart for refuelling, what must have been about fifteen thousand miles in two days in aircraft with canvas seats. To have attempted anything more than the most perfunctory medical examination last night would have been counter-productive, positively misleading.’

  The time had come to appear to support the Chief of Staff, who certainly needed to be extracted from what was becoming too much of a confrontation, Spencer decided. Quickly he said: ‘We need to do a lot more than send a military detachment to Antarctica.’

  Hoolihan shifted uncomfortably. ‘What?’ he asked, inadequately.

  ‘It’s not just us Americans, down there is it?’

  ‘No,’ agreed Hoolihan, relieved at having the answer. ‘There’s an international agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, signed as long ago as 1959. Over forty countries have signed it now, prohibiting nuclear explosions and radioactive waste …’

  ‘So other countries have stations there?’ cut off Spencer, refusing a tourists’ lecture. Spencer, who’d practised law before entering politics, still followed the lawyers’ creed of never asking a question to which he didn’t know the answer, as he did now because he’d read the Foundation’s web-site fact sheet before their arrival that morning.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hoolihan again. ‘British. Russian. Some joint projects.’

  ‘We heard of a similar outbreak from anywhere else down there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So we can ensure the secrecy?’ demanded Morgan.

  ‘I think so,’ said Hoolihan, hopefully.

  ‘Here’s what I want you to do,’ Spencer told the Foundation official, way ahead of his superior. ‘I want you – your people – to run a computer check, worldwide, on any unusual or unexplained phenomena. Don’t restrict it to scientific papers: let’s look at newspapers, magazines, stuff like that …’ He hesitated, deciding to allow himself the entendre, to show he was unfazed by the responsibility Morgan imagined he’d just sidestepped. ‘It’s the Net. Let’s spread it wide.

  ‘That’s a pretty big undertaking,’ protested Hoolihan.

  ‘It won’t be confined just to you,’ promised Morgan.

  ‘Who else is to be included?’ demanded Spencer. The Fort Detrick director and Hoolihan had been escorted to the White House service gate and Spencer and Morgan had moved to the Chief of Staff’s more comfortable permanent office. They’d had coffee and Danish delivered from the cafeteria. In ancient Rome, reflected Spencer, he would have waited for Morgan to eat and drink before taking anything himself.

  ‘The Agency,’ suggested Morgan. ‘They’ve got facilities, people, everywhere in the world. Most of the stuff they provide for presidential briefings comes straight out of local newspapers. National Security people spend all their time listening to other people’s telephone conversations: they might have heard something coming out of McMurdo already!’

  ‘They have to be told why?’ pressed Spencer. There was a risk of his being elbowed out – losing control completely – if the CIA and NSA got too much of the pie. Or of Morgan gaining too many allies.

  Morgan shook his head, thinking for seve
ral minutes. Speaking as the excuse appeared to formulate, he said: Tell them it’s a personal presidential request, so they don’t lay down on it … something he intends putting into a major address, State of the Union even … we think it’s something to do with the health programme but we’re not sure yet …’

  Spencer frowned, unhappy at the generalities. ‘You think they’ll go for something as vague as that?’

  ‘It’s got to be as vague as that,’ insisted the other man. ‘And they don’t have a choice of going for it or not.’

  ‘The CIA director has direct access to the President,’ reminded Spencer, alert for the reply.

  ‘I control access to the President!’ Morgan pointed out.

  ‘Everything they get is to be channelled through me to you?’ established Spencer.

  ‘It’s your assignment, Paul,’ confirmed Morgan. The smile was the showing of teeth that a victim sees when a shark twists for the unexpected strike.

  ‘Pelham had a point about relatives of the dead.’ Spencer hoped to be able to locate the direction from which the attack might come from the man’s reply: from the body language or innuendo at least.

  ‘You unhappy about the national security provisions?’ asked Morgan, who was also a qualified lawyer.

  ‘I think there could be a constitutional argument. And there’s quite a few hungry lawyers who’d be willing to make a high profile case.’ Spencer wished it was a warning that could have been placed on record.

  ‘You got an alternative?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Spencer. Perhaps having a record wouldn’t have been such a good idea after all. Constitutional infringement – an impeachable offence for a president – was clearly the factor worrying Morgan. ‘How long before we tell the President?’

  Morgan thought before replying. ‘There could be a legal problem,’ he allowed, reluctantly. ‘There’s got to be plausible deniability.’

  The CIA had long ago added that avoidance phrase to the Washington political lexicon, Spencer remembered. Along with another of its former director’s, identifying the agency – or The Company, as it enjoyed to be known for some reason he’d never understood – as ‘the President’s bag of tricks’. Spencer suddenly had the unsettling feeling that he was going to need a lot of boxes, containing a lot more tricks. There was nothing that could come out of any box – anywhere – he couldn’t handle. ‘Always,’ he agreed at once. Just as quickly – maintaining the pressure – he qualified: ‘That’s one of the daily decisions we’ve got to make, you and I …’ The pause was intentional. ‘You’ve got to make. Just how long we keep this from him.’

  Morgan’s head came sharply up, at the caveat. ‘You’re totally right, Paul. My decision.

  Fuck, thought Spencer. A bad mistake. The first – the only – for a long time. He steadied himself. Morgan was really worried, overcompensating with bravado. Back away, pretend-not-to-notice time. ‘I think we’ve covered it all.’

  ‘I think so too, Paul. Don’t lose sight of the ball, will you? When I do tell the President, it’s you he’ll be depending on.’

  ‘I know,’ accepted Spencer. The president would know, too.

  Jack Stoddart knew he was dead. He couldn’t move. So his body had gone. Useless. Everything was white, Fellini-like again. He’d read, sneered at, point-of-death people always talking of blinding whiteness from which they’d retreated. Come back to be given a second – or reintroduced – existence. Maybe he wasn’t quite dead. Maybe he was still on the unsignposted road. Had another – that reintroducing – chance.

  ‘Hello!’

  ‘How you feeling?’

  There were hands on him, more firmly holding him down, even though his initial instinct hadn’t been to move. ‘Where …? he started and stopped, knowing. Everything avalanched in, overwhelmingly. Now he did try to move, pulling up against the hands, whatever, that were holding him.

  ‘Easy now! Take it easy.’ A female voice, matter-of-fact. ‘You’ve got a lot of monitors – catheters too – connected here. Let’s not have any jerky movements, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Stoddart. He could remember – thought he could remember – it all but he needed time to think, to be sure. The figure beside him was totally enclosed in a protective suit. He couldn’t focus a face behind the vizor.

  ‘Don’t those fucking outfits come in any other colour?’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the filtered voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That reaction. That’s very good.’

  ‘You a doctor?’

  ‘I applied for the garbage collector’s job but failed the practical.’

  ‘That’s not good at all.’

  ‘It is, Jack. You might not appreciate it now but so far you’re doing very well indeed. So, how do you feel?’

  ‘Trapped. Held down.’

  ‘Good again! Now tell me what you know I wanted to hear.’

  ‘Tired, still. Ache like hell. I’m thirsty.

  ‘Ache anywhere particular?’

  Stoddart thought. ‘Back, maybe. Kinda general.’

  ‘You see my fingers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many am I holding up?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘One. You’re giving me the stiff middle finger.’

  ‘I’d never give you the stiff middle finger after what happened.’

  Stoddart didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What happened?’

  Again Stoddart didn’t reply.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I asked you what happened.’

  ‘I heard you.’

  ‘Can you remember?’

  Stoddart snorted a laugh. ‘You think I can’t remember?’

  ‘I might, until I hear you tell me.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘What others.’

  ‘The people I came back with.’

  ‘What people you came back with?’

  ‘I get it,’ he said, at last. He was alive!

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘What we’re doing?’

  ‘What are we doing, John?’

  ‘Jack,’ Stoddart corrected, at once. ‘My mind’s OK.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me what happened.’ She let him talk for a full two minutes before saying: ‘OK.’

  ‘No!’ he denied her, at once. ‘You didn’t answer me! What about Patricia …?’ Quickly he added: ‘And the others …?’

  ‘They’re being looked after every bit as good as you are.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked you … what I meant. Which you know … You want to tell me your name …?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to do that.’

  ‘OK, lady, if that’s what I’ve got to call you. Don’t fuck with me, lady. I want to know how the people are who came out with me … particularly Patricia Jefferies. She all right? The rest of them all right?’

  ‘We’ve been talking an hour.’

  ‘That’s not an answer!’

  ‘It is the answer. I don’t know if any of the others have even woken up yet! Said anything. What they’ve said.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be.’

  ‘You a medical doctor or a psychiatrist? Or psychologist? What?’

  ‘Two out of three: medical and psychologist. You’re getting two for the price of one.’

  ‘So how am I?’

  ‘You know I can’t make a diagnosis that quickly!’

  ‘What can you say?’

  ‘Mentally you’re sounding fine.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Let’s go on finding out. Let’s get you disconnected, shall we …? Strapped you down because we didn’t want you pulling out any plugs …’

  Stoddart felt the restraining straps come off and then the cuffs and bands of the monitoring machines. When she gently pulled out the catheter he got an instan
t erection. ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Don’t be. That’s the sort of response I wanted. Can you sit up by yourself?’

  He did so, wedging an arm beneath himself as a lever. He was naked, under the covering. He was glad the erection had collapsed. He was sore.

  ‘How did that feel?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Still ache?’

  ‘Yes. Not too bad, though.’ He looked at the Band Aid in the crook of his left arm.

  ‘Helped ourselves to some blood. You want to get out of bed?’

  ‘I guess …’ He looked around and saw underwear, mules and what looked like a surgeon’s operating tunic, green, neatly folded on a bedside chair.

  She said: ‘All your stuff’s been taken for forensic examination. Can you manage by yourself?’

  Stoddart swung his legs off the bed and reached for the clothes, unhappy at the feeling of weakness. He tried not to show it as he dressed.

  ‘Not so good?’ she asked, perceptively.

  ‘A little weak. Like you feel after being in bed a long time.’ He sat back, on the cot edge. She remained standing. He supposed it was more comfortable to stand: the suit looked stiff and made crackling sounds when she moved.

  ‘You ever been in bed a long time, like in hospital?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s the scar on your lower abdomen?’

  She’d been very thorough, he thought. ‘Appendectomy.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I was a kid. Eighteen, I guess.’

  ‘How long were you in hospital then?’

  ‘A day or two, I guess. I can’t …’ He stopped himself saying he couldn’t remember because what he did remember was the purpose of every question. ‘I was in the Henry Sexton Memorial Hospital in Butte, Montana, for five days. And it was when I was eighteen.’