you can't get to from here. Keep me advised as things develop."
"Will do, Mr. President. Please be advised, the Russian Special Liaison to the Wednesday Island Operation is still unavailable. Do you wish to inform the Russians of the relief operation?"
Castilla scowled at the bars of morning sunlight cutting across the rich reds and blues of the Navaho rug on the office floor. "Negative, Major. It's apparent they have nothing more to say to us, and we have nothing more to say to them."
Chapter Forty-five
The North Face, Wednesday Island
Randi Russell wasn't sure about the existence of a place called "heaven." But if such an environment did exist, she was now certain of two things: it would be warm, and you wouldn't be alone.
"Okay, try that," Jon Smith said, rocking back on his heels.
Experimentally she flexed the fingers of her right hand. Jon had lightly bandaged them after applying a thin layer of antibiotic ointment. At her insistence he had done each digit separately so she could still have full use of the hand.
"It's not bad," she replied. "They sort of itch and tingle a little but not too bad."
Smith nodded, looking pleased. "That's good. I think you picked up a good touch of chilblain climbing that cliff, but I don't think you've taken any permanent damage."
"Apparently you'll still be able count to ten without taking your shoes off." Valentina sat up in the doubled sleeping bag, working on the handcuff around Randi's left wrist. Even clad in thermal underwear and with an unzipped parka draped over her shoulders, the professor still exuded a certain air of raffish elegance.
Randi found she couldn't be annoyed. In fact, there was almost a partylike atmosphere in the little ice cave. There was no logical reason for it. They were still on Wednesday Island, still hiding and surrounded by enemies, but the team was whole again.
Valentina gave a final delicate twist of the lock probe, and the handcuff loop snicked open. "There you go, darling. You have your wrist back."
"Thank you," Randi smiled. "It's appreciated."
"Beyond your hands, how do you feel?" Smith went on, touching her cheek with the back of a bared hand, hunting for signs of a fever.
"I'm fine," Randi replied in a knee-jerk response.
He continued to regard her with a disconcertingly level gaze, the very faintest of knowing smiles on his face.
Randi sighed. "All right," she replied. "I feel like an old dishrag that's been wrung out too many times. It's like I'm never going to be warm inside again and I'm never going to feel not tired again and all I want to do is sleep for another thousand years. Satisfied?"
Smith's taciturn features broke into one of the rare boyish grins that involved his full face, the smile Sophie had talked about. "That sounds about right," he replied. "I'm not hearing any pulmonary congestion, and your body temperature seems to be back where it's supposed to be, so I think you were knocked out more by simple exhaustion than deep-core exposure. Still, stay warm."
"I won't argue." Randi burrowed gratefully deeper into her sleeping bag. She was back in her own thermal long johns, and the pellet stove and their combined body heat had brought the interior of the cave up to close to freezing, but it wasn't exactly cozy. "But still, feeling this awful now is a vast improvement over how I felt last night."
The smile on Smith's face snapped away, replaced by a faint disapproving frown. Randi sensed it was aimed inward. "I'm sorry about what happened at the station, Randi. I shouldn't have left you hanging like that. My fault."
"I didn't exactly shine, either, Jon. I never should have let that little shit Kropodkin take me like he did." She smiled wryly and then sadly. "I'm supposed to be good. Maybe if I'd been a little better, I might have gotten Trowbridge out."
"I'm finding you can't live on might-haves, Randi. We all have to make do on best-we-cans."
Smyslov hunched his way back from the cave entrance and hunkered down on his heels, joining the group at the sleeping bags. "We have no wind outside and no snow. The sea smoke has come in heavily, but I believe it will burn off soon. It looks like it will be a lovely day, at least for the eightieth parallel."
"As soon as he has a clear sky, Kretek will go for the anthrax," Randi said.
Over their sketchy tea-and-energy-bar breakfast, she and the others had exchanged briefings over events at the Misha crash