Arctic Rising

15

Down toward the docks Anika found a thrift shop she’d eyed a few times before while on the way to The Greenhouse. There were no cameras in the ceiling that might recognize her as she pulled the hood off Chernov’s oversized coat to reveal her face. Tired-looking mothers and burnt-out young men with tattoos wandered the racks, and the store smelled of antiseptic.

And there were some good finds: jeans with thermal lining, a thick, gray wool turtleneck, an oversized fisherman’s jacket that came down past her knees that contained a multitude of useful pockets.

She paid and changed into these, folding Chernov’s jacket away into a shopping bag, then continued through the store until she had three or four days’ clothes.

At a small convenience store she packed everything into a backpack, and then purchased two disposable phones.

The clerk, a teenager with tiger tattoos on her forearms that fluoresced, sighed. “I can’t take cash for those,” she announced, reciting it tonelessly, obviously having memorized it. “You need to let me photocopy some form of ID, or pay with a credit card.”

Anika slid the clerk more than she’d make in a week. “I was attacked,” she explained. “They took my wallet and everything in it and my phone. I had to go to the bank to get them canceled, and get some money for myself for the week.”

The clerk eyed the money, and a pink tongue briefly licked an upper lip. She looked at the bruises on Anika’s neck and her scuffed knuckles. “Then why two of them, eh?”

“Work.” Anika held up one phone. “Personal.” She held up the other.

“Yeah. Okay.”

The money disappeared with the pass of a hand.

Outside, Anika ripped the phone open, activated it, and checked her voice mail. Two disposable phones, maybe she’d buy some more before leaving for Greenland.

This was how criminals stayed untraceable, right?

There was a message on it from Anton, one of the two agents from Resolute, with a brief comment about him having some new information. “Call me back,” he said cheerfully on the recording.

It had been left before Commander Claude had handcuffed her.

Anton betrayed no surprise at the sound of her voice when he picked up. “Anika Duncan, you’re in great trouble. I was not expecting you to ever call after I heard about what happened.”

“You work very late,” she said. “I was wondering if you would answer.”

“Your commanding officer was almost killed. Two MPs were killed. All of this as follow-up to the attack on your airship. I am drinking lots of coffee, and there is much adrenaline. And paperwork.”

“Michel is okay?” Anika asked, shocked, and relieved.

“Not okay. He was airlifted out to burn ward. Critical, but alive.”

“Thank God.” Anika rubbed her forehead. “When I saw him on the ground, I was sure he was dead.”

“Anika, what are you doing here? Why are you running?”

“People keep trying to kill me, Anton. First it was the Kosatka, then someone attacked me on the road back from Arctic Bay.” She summarized everything that had happened for him, but left out where she was calling from, and anything about Vy. “I don’t trust anyone.”

“You are not investigator.” Anton’s voice was tight and stressed. She noticed he was dropping articles from his speech, like “an” or “the” at random. English was not his first language, and as he got stressed, it was getting harder for him to focus. “You think you can solve this alone? Like Nancy Drew? Come into protective custody, we can help. You are wanted for questioning, you are not prime suspect.”

He said that last thing with such a heartfelt plea. “I believe you,” she said. “But what happens once I’m locked up and you’re investigating? I become a target, again, Anton. I don’t want to be a target.” She rubbed her neck.

The cold air made her shiver. She’d been standing out in the wind too long. The hot air of The Greenhouse sounded more and more appealing.

Anton was quiet for a long time, until he finally said, “If you think there are answers in Greenland, you are wrong.”

That spooked her. “Greenland? Why do you think I would go to Greenland?”

“The last person to clear Kosatka was stationed in Nuuk.”

Shit. They were following her line of thinking.

“Braffit. That’s who the commander told me it was,” she said, crushed. “Have you talked to him?”

“Brauthwaite. Peter Brauthwaite,” corrected Anton. “There are people monitoring this phone call right here getting mad at me now. But trust me, I am telling you this to let you know you are not a suspect. I want to help you.”

“What did Peter Brauthwaite say? Who paid him to do this?” Why was all this happening?

“Here is why I think you are not a suspect,” Anton said. “This man walked out of his office the moment news that you were shot down began to spread. He booked a flight from Nuuk to Thule.…”

Anika interrupted. “He was going to the Pole?”

“Yes. He disappeared there. So please, prove me right, and come in and we can help each other. Anika, now is the only time I may be able to help you. Interpol, CIA, MI6—everyone is involved now.”

“Why?”

“Those radiation readings you think you saw? Two weeks ago, in Siberia, a nuclear warhead was stolen. So now, if you can get me that backed-up data, I think we might be able to put these two cases together instead of pursuing them separately.”

“Stolen? A nuclear warhead was stolen?”

“Everything is moving to high alert. And these people who stole the nuclear device, they know your name now. You understand? I know you are worried about security in the UNPG, but I will bring you right into my own office, Anika. Under protection of a close handful that I trust with my own life.”

She knew he was earnest. But she couldn’t figure how to undo what had been done.

And she couldn’t stop wondering what these people were planning to do with a nuclear device in the Arctic Circle.

It had to be destined for somewhere. She doubted it had been dumped overboard. Was this going to be another Karachi? Terrorists there had gotten a Pakistani army nuclear bomb and set it off in the capital. The UN was still overseeing reconstruction of the country as a result of the fallout.

At least, she thought, everything that had happened to her and Tom wasn’t over dumping waste. For some, morbid, deviant reason, it felt slightly better that someone had tried to kill over something far more menacing.

“I don’t have the data,” Anika said. “I gave it to Claude.” She turned the phone off and threw it into the trash can on the corner of the street and headed back for The Greenhouse. She pulled the parka’s hood up around her face tight, shoved her hands in the pockets, and headed off down the street.

She had to get Vy to cancel plans to get her to Greenland. And apologize.

And beg her to help get to Thule.

The last time she’d seen Thule was on her first flight out to Baffin. She’d been getting ready for a proof-of-concept heavy-lift airship flight out of Chengdu. The task was to drop a two-megawatt, fully contained solar power substation into the middle of a Chinese Army camp on the base of a mountain somewhere in South China. The army was looking at outsourcing the delivery of solar substations that allowed a garrison to camp somewhere without needing to be resupplied.

The Chinese Army was obsessed, along with most of the rest of the world’s armies, with divorcing itself from fossil fuels for transportation.

With oil reserves the world over at uncertain levels, geologists claiming a limited supply anywhere outside of the booming Arctic, and oil at increasingly higher prices, the world’s armed forces had been doubling down on non-oil technology for as long as Anika could remember.

When the call had come in that her UNPG application was accepted, Anika had taken the first bullet train to Beijing from Chengdu and skipped out on her contract.

From Beijing she’d flown north.

Over Russia, and then out over the sea. And eventually, the large jet began to descend, toward the gray ocean and occasional plates of stubborn pack ice.

Anika remembered when she saw Thule: a ragged bowl of, according to the chatty pilot, the last thirty thousand square miles of floating ice in the world.

A city clung to the remains of the polar ice cap. Initially a sargasso of decommissioned floating drill rigs, tankers, and supercarriers, the metal infection had spread out across the ice when retired ice island experts began blowing snow out on the cap to thicken it, inserting metal poles to help further cool the ice, and moving out onto it.

Thule was initially an over-polar trade port. And then it became a town. And then a city. All in thirty years.

Out in the international waters, peopled with immigrants from all over the entire world, it had somehow, despite everyone’s best efforts, turned itself into a country. A petri dish of a country, unrecognized by the UN, and yet, like Somaliland, issuing its own currency, electing its own officials, and carrying on its own trade.

Thule was exactly the sort of place you ran to when you were in trouble.

It was also where Anika realized she’d packed wrong for the Arctic. Global warming or not, it still didn’t mean the North Pole was anything even vaguely tropical. She’d purchased her first winter coat at Thule’s airport.

Anika turned the corner to The Greenhouse, and stopped. Two policemen stood outside talking to Chernov, who stood with his arms folded.

There were three cars parked outside, meaning someone was inside. Talking to Vy.

Anika let out the deep breath she’d been holding. More shit.

She was going to turn back around the way she’d come, but someone grabbed her by the elbow. “I’m from Violet,” a gravelly voice whispered cheerfully. “No, don’t look over at me, keep walking, there are other eyes looking for you. We don’t want to raise their attention.”

Anika kept walking forward, and the man to her right fell into step with her. She felt he was somewhat shorter than her, maybe five feet six?

“I’m going to slip my hand around the small of your back, now, okay?”

“Sure.” He did so, pulling her close into his hip.

“Now we’re just a couple out for a walk,” he said. “Stare at the police.”

“What?”

“That’s what people do. Slow down.”

They slowed and stared at the police, who ignored them. After a moment they sped back up, and the man steered her back down the other side of the block.

Out of sight from The Greenhouse now, he stopped her by a set of steps. He was a wiry man, with crow’s-feet wrinkles around his brown eyes. And from the rounded face and features, Anika’d bet he was at least part Inuit.

“I’m Jim Kusugak,” he said, confirming her guess as he shook her hand briefly. “I’m an associate of Violet’s. The police are all over The Greenhouse looking for you. Violet’s keeping them busy.”

She wanted to trust him. But then she thought about everything that had happened up to this point. “How did she know to send you out here to help me?”

Jim grinned. “Violet has friends everywhere here. She was given a few minutes notice before the police arrived. Enough time for her to call me about her … problem.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” Jim reached into a pocket in the duffel bag he had slung by his side and pulled out a very thick envelope. “Violet can’t help you make it to Greenland right now. The authorities have always been willing to work with her, as most of her business is legitimate. But now they’re apparently shocked—shocked—to find out about the shady sides of her businesses in Baffin. So it’s time to retreat, and retrench.”

Anika sighed. She was causing trouble for everyone she got involved with.

Jim handed her the envelope. “So you have a choice. This is enough cash to disappear with. Could get you to Greenland.”

It was tempting. She couldn’t imagine Vy wanted to see more of her after Anika’d dragged her down with her. This would avoid complications, more people hurt. “Or?”

“Meet Violet at her safe house, and plan your next step with more help.”

Anika sat down on the steps. How well did she know Vy? Well enough not to assume Baffin’s drug lord wasn’t going to cut her throat and leave her for dead as revenge for bringing the police down on her favorite place of business?

She doubted it. Or Jim would have done that already.

No, Vy was reaching out. Offering to get even further deeply involved.

But could she do that?

It wasn’t like Vy was an innocent. She was a goddamned drug lord. She might be bubbly and blond and cute, but …

But …

Vy would be a powerful person to have at Anika’s side.

That was the cold calculation.

The other was that, Anika found herself looking back at The Greenhouse and thinking that she really didn’t want to just run away without at least talking to Vy one last time. To at least apologize.

“I’ll go to the safe house,” she told Jim. “Where is it?”

Jim Kusugak held out a hand. “You won’t like this,” he grinned. “We have a hundred-mile kayak trip out into the Lancaster Sound ahead of us.”

“Kayaking?”

“Kayaking.” He pointed at the cold sea out past the harbor. Miles and miles of cold, wet nothingness.

He was right. Anika didn’t like it.