Frozen Solid: A Novel Read Free Page B

one to know others. It also took one to understand how they, especially when young, simmered along in an almost continual state of impatience, waiting for sluggards to deduce what they had discovered long ago. Barnard had been like that earlier in his career. Hallie was like that now. He had not been the easiest person to be around then, and she was not now.
    But all of that was old knowledge. This was Monday, and Barnard was dealing with something new. Hallie had flown out on Thursday afternoon. She had called from LAX very early on Friday morning and sent an email from Christchurch on Saturday. Having heard nothing since, he didn’t even know if she had arrived at the South Pole.
    But communication wasn’t the thing bothering him most. It was, rather, the South Pole assignment itself, which he had given her. Had been directed to give her, more precisely, by his own boss, DCDC—Director, Centers for Disease Control. He could have pushed back, of course; he’d been around long enough and earned enough respect to do that. CDC directors were political appointees, came and went, and he had seen more arrive and depart than he cared to remember. At the time, though, there had seemed no reason to object. And Hallie herself had been thrilled, as he’d known she would be, with the opportunity. Most microbiologists would spend their entire careers without getting to the South Pole, one of the most extreme—and coveted—research postings on earth.
    But by Friday afternoon, something had started bothering him, a mental splinter that at first he could not tease out. He looked at the possible reasons, one after another. The South Pole was a dangerous place, true, but no worse than other realms Hallie’s work had taken her into. The previous year, for instance, she’d almost died in a Mexican supercave called Cueva de Luz, Cave of Light, which had been full of traps. A swamp of bat shit teeming with pathogens. Acid lakes. Five-hundred-foot sheer drops. Flooded tunnels. At least the South Pole was aboveground, settled, and civilized. So the problem wasn’t where he had sent her.
    The work itself—technical ice diving—was also hazardous but, again, not worse than other diving her work had required, in caves like that vast Mexican labyrinth or on deep wrecks involving possible biohazards, to name just two. So it wasn’t what he had sent her to do, either.
    He had known where he was sending her and what she would bedoing, and he had been, if not happy with those challenges, at least comfortable that she was equal to both. It was only after some time that he’d realized that his unease derived not from the destination or the work.
    He had called the director back. Laraine Harris had taken her PhD from Tulane and retained a rich and musical Louisiana accent. Barnard could have listened to her talk all day long, about pretty much anything, just for the sound of her voice.
    “I had a question about Emily Durant,” he said.
    “The scientist who died,” Harris said.
    “Right. When you told me about Emily, I didn’t think to ask how she died. Do you know, by any chance?”
    If Harris thought his question odd, her tone didn’t suggest that. “I asked them—NSF—the same question.”
    “What did they say?”
    “I’m sorry, that information isn’t available. Quote, unquote.”
    “Does that seem”—what was the right word here?—“unusual?”
    “Maybe a little. But it was an official personnel request, not a next-of-kin notification. They might not know themselves.”
    That rang true. Communication in Washington was as complex and nuanced as a Japanese tea ceremony. Laraine had just described one of the invisible rules. If someone said information wasn’t available, back off. Frontal attacks rarely worked here. Much better to find and exploit the vulnerable chink or flank.
    They said goodbye, and he sat staring out a window. The view from his office wasn’t much: a big parking lot, mostly empty this late on a Friday,