the Atlantic. By the time they reached the continental shelf the sun was high and it was time to dive.
Murphy was waiting in the pharmacy. Henry introduced her to his children as Murphy, but she told them, “You can call me Sarah.”
* * *
—
THE GEORGIA NAVIGATED NORTH, rounding Labrador, threading a path through the shallow waters of Baffin Bay into the Arctic, where it lurked under the ice, two hundred miles off the coast of Siberia. Captain Dixon was shocked by how fractured the Arctic had become in the two years since he last had gone under the polar cap. There were now large stretches of open water called polynyas, where the submarine could rise to periscope depth and receive messages in brief coded bursts. The messages now came from the National Airborne Operations Centers, which meant that the president and other key members of government were operating from Doomsday airborne command posts while the biowar raged.
The Georgia was one of the two Ohio-class submarines equipped with SEAL Delivery Vehicles, submersible pods that allowed a team of commandos to carry out clandestine operations at some distance from the boat. The battery-powered SDVs were small and quiet and nearly undetectable.
Henry met with the SEAL team that would accompany him. “We are not acting as warriors but as historians,” he told them. “One day, people will ask, ‘Who did this to us?’ And we will have the evidence. History will make its judgments based on what we find.”
The burly leader of the SEAL team, Lieutenant Cooksey, openly worried about Henry’s ability to accompany them. “We train for this,” he said. He didn’t have to mention that they all looked like they could play in the NFL.
“I’m the only one who knows what we’re looking for,” Henry said curtly. No one was going to keep him from this mission.
Before the team entered the SDV, Henry went to talk to his children. Teddy’s leg was jiggling as it did when he was really worried. “It’s cold in the water,” Teddy said. “I’m worried you’ll freeze.”
“They have special suits,” Henry said. “I’ll be back in time for dinner. And then we’ll stay underwater until the war is over. We’ll be safe.”
Helen didn’t say anything, but her eyes were brimming. She embraced Henry and then took Teddy’s hand.
Murphy whispered, “I’ll take care of them.”
Henry went into the lock-out chamber with eleven members of the SEAL team. It had been a long time since he had put on scuba gear. The last occasion had been in the tropical Bahamas, when he hadn’t even needed a wetsuit. In these frigid waters, divers required a dry suit—a far more complicated apparatus. Henry followed the steps that Lieutenant Cooksey modeled for him. The divers were already wearing quilted jumpsuits and thick woolen socks. Cooksey showed him how to open the double-zippered top, which ran from one shoulder to the navel and back to the other shoulder, exactly like an autopsy incision. Henry crawled inside and reached into each arm of the suit, pushing until his fingers were deep inside the neoprene gloves of the suit itself. It was a struggle to get his large head through the neck seal. Cooksey helped him with the tanks and regulators, then Henry put on the mask and pulled the edge of the hood over the lip of the mask so that water didn’t leak through. He felt as if he were inside a balloon. He gave a thumbs-up to Cooksey.
The men carried their fins and climbed into the two dry-deck shelters containing the submersibles. The pilot and copilot took their places at the front of the vehicle, and then the ports opened and Arctic water flooded the open pods—frigid even with all the insulation inside the dry suit. After about forty-five minutes, when the chambers were fully flooded, the hangar doors opened and the two SDVs were manually guided out into the sea. They hung in the water like a pair of baby whales. The Georgia lay beneath them, like a sunken galleon. And then they began to move.
There was life down here: fanning beds of kelp, algae hanging like moss from the underside of ice floes, and tiny fish with residual fins slithering snakelike through the water. A walrus took a look, then scurried away. Henry thought of nature’s abundance and wondered what mankind was doing to it at this very moment.
It took an hour to get to the designated insertion area. The pilot signaled to the other submersible and they came to a halt. One by one the SEALs swam out of the pods. Henry was the last to emerge. He swam through a cloud of cod. When his head emerged from the water, two SEALs grabbed him under the arms and lifted him onto the narrow rocky shore.
Removing his mask, he saw low-lying glacial mountains in the distance. Between the coast and the mountains a retreating ice field exposed a barren tundra. The most remote place in the world, Henry thought; no wonder the Soviets had chosen it. His map indicated that the biological warfare plant was half a mile inland, behind an icy hillock. The SEALs took a moment to prepare their weapons, then began their approach.
Although it was midafternoon, the polar sun was low, and their footsteps made a sucking noise as they trudged through the slushy tundra in the autumnal twilight. Henry was slowing everybody down. Cooksey motioned to his team, which spread out in formation to approach the factory from different angles. When they got to the hillock, Henry and Cooksey climbed a ways up and knelt behind the crest. Cooksey looked through his field glasses, then passed them to Henry.
The factory was half buried in a snowdrift. Nothing emerged from the three towering smokestacks. Nearby was an old railroad track with telephone poles running beside it, but no lines on the poles.
Cooksey waved the team forward.
They came to the entrance, a barn-like door, wide open. Inside, remnants of the lab were still in place, warming ovens and vats that may have held anthrax or smallpox. Perhaps they still did. What was clear was that they had not made Kongoli in this place. The lab had been abandoned for decades, probably since the Soviet Union had dissolved.
Cooksey looked at Henry. “Are we done here, doc?”
Henry walked out of the decrepit building into the dim Arctic light. Cooksey gestured for the team to retrace their steps. “You go on,” said Henry. “There’s something else I have to see. You can wait for me.”
“You’re not going anywhere alone, doc,” said Cooksey. “How far are we talking about?’
“It’s another mile, I’m afraid.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Dead polar bears.”
In the soggy tundra, the hike took more than an hour of precious twilight. Henry followed the coordinates on his GPS device, indicating where the bears had stopped moving. They would be in a rather tight circle, and they should be fairly well preserved in this climate, even with the melting permafrost. There were few predators here, other than the bears themselves.
At first, Henry didn’t see them. The white of their fur looked like patches of snow, but once he saw one, the entire group came into view, about ten of them. They lay on the ground, deflated by death.
“Jeez, what the hell is that?” one of the SEALs said, pointing at what looked like a log.
Under an apron of snow, Henry saw something large that had emerged from the melting ice. It wasn’t a log. It was a tusk.
Henry used his map to brush the snow away, exposing a giant face. The furry torso had been ripped apart by the polar bears.
“It’s a mammoth,” said Henry. “Don’t touch it. It’s contaminated with Kongoli.”
The SEALs backed away. They were the only people in the world who knew what had happened.
“Well, doc, what are we going to tell history?” Cooksey asked.
Henry looked up. The last flock of Siberian cranes had taken flight, headed for China.
“We’re going to say that we did this to ourselves.”