Austin showed his teeth in a wide grin. “You'd be better off call- ing in the marines, Ryan. NUMA is a scientific organization dedi- cated to gathering knowledge. It's not a military organization.”
“C'mon, Kurt, you're being disingenuous,” Ryan said, with a knowing smile. “We researched your job at NUMA. This Special As- signments Team you run has come up against some pretty hard cases. You didn't stop the bad guys by whacking them over the head with a scientific treatise.”
“You flatter me, Marcus. I don't have the power to authorize a joint mission. I'd have to run it by higher-ups.”
Ryan took the answer as a qualified yes. “I new you'd come around,” he said triumphantly. “Thank you so much.”
“Save your thanks. I have no intention of going to the head hon- chos.”
“Why not?” “NUMA would be putting its reputation on the line if it worked with a fringe organization like SOS. On the other hand, you'd gain public support for the Sentinels by putting them under NUMA's um- brella of legitimacy. Sorry. It's a one-sided deal.”
Ryan brushed back his hair. “We haven't told you everything, Kurt. I have a personal stake in this, as well. It wasn't just Ben's cousin-Josh Green was killed.”
“It was my fault,” Ben said. “I ran into the open, and he tried to stop me. They shot him.”
“You did what anyone would have done in your place,” Ryan said.
Josh was a brave man.“ ”You're talking about two murders now,“ Austin said. ”Have you reported them to the police?"
“No. We want to deal with this ourselves. And there's something olse that may persuade you to change your mind. We tracked down Ae new owner of the land around Ben's lake. It was a real estate straw corporation... set up by Oceanus.”
“You're sure of that?” “Positive. Are you with us now?”
Austin shook his head. “Before you buckle on your six-shooters and ride off, let me remind you what you're up against. Oceanus has money, and worldwide connections, and as you've seen, they don't hesitate to commit cold-blooded murder. They'd swat you and any- one you brought in from SOS like a fly. I'm sorry about Ben's cousin and your friend getting killed, but it only proves what I've been say- ing. You'll be putting your people in similar danger.” He glanced pointedly at Therri.
“They're willing to take any risk for the environment,” Ryan said. “Apparently, NUMA doesn't give a damn about it.”
“Hold on, Marcus,” Therri said. She had seen Austin's jaw harden. “Kurt has a point. Maybe we could offer a compromise. SOS could work behind the scenes with NUMA.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer,” Austin said.
Therri hadn't expected Austin's quick rebuff. “What's that sup- posed to mean?” she said, a hint of coldness creeping into her voice.
“I think this is less about the whales and the walruses and dead friends, and more about your friend's ego.” He turned back to Ryan. “You're still ticked off about the loss of the Sea Sentinel. She was your pride and joy. You were going to play the martyr in front of the cable news cameras, but the Danes beat you to the punch when they dropped the charges and quietly kicked you out of their country.”
“That's not true,” Therri said. “Marcus is-”
Ryan silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Don't waste your breath. It's apparent that Kurt is a fair-weather friend.”
“Better than no friend at all,” Austin said. He pointed toward the statue of Roosevelt. “Maybe you should go back and read that guy s resume again. He didn't ask others to stick their necks out. Sorry to hear about your cousin, Ben, and about Josh Green. Nice to see you again, Therri.”
Austin had had his fill ofRyan's self-aggrandizement. He'd been hopeful when he heard Nighthawk's story, but angry at Ryan for slamming the door on a possible lead. He was striding down the path when he heard footsteps from behind. Therri had followed him from the memorial. She caught up with him and grabbed him lightly by the arm. “Kurt, please reconsider. Marcus really needs your help.”
“I can see that. But I can't agree to his conditions.”
“We can work something out,” she pleaded.
“If you and Ben want help from NUMA, you'll have to cut loose from Ryan.”
“I can't do that,” she said, bringing the power other lovely eyes to bear.
“I think you can,” Austin said, boring back with his own, equally intense gaze.
“Damnit, Austin,” she said with exasperation, “you're one stub- born bastard.”
Austin chuckled. “Does that mean you won't go out to dinner with me?”
Therri's face darkened with anger, and she spun on her heel and strode off along the path. Austin watched her until she disappeared around a curve. He shook his head. The sacrifices I make for NUMA, he thought. He started off toward the parking lot, only to stop short a minute later when a figure popped out of the woods. It was Ben Nighthawk.
“I made an excuse to get away,” Nighthawk said breathlessly. “I told Marcus I had to use the rest room. I had to talk to you. I don't blame you for not wanting to hook up with SOS. Marcus has let all Ac publicity go to his head. He thinks he's Wyatt Earp. But I saw those guys kill my cousin and Josh. I tried to tell him what he's up against, but he won't listen. If SOS goes in, my family is dead meat.” “Tell me where they are and I'll do what I can.” “It's tough to explain. I'll have to draw you a map. Oh, hell-” Ryan was striding up the path toward them, an angry expression on his handsome face. “Call me,” Austin said.
Ben nodded and walked back to meet Ryan. They became en- gaged in what looked like a heated discussion. Then Ryan put his arm around Ben and guided him back to the memorial. He turned back once, to glare at Austin, who shrugged off the evil eye and headed back to his car.
Twenty minutes later, Austin strolled into the Air and Space Museum on Independence Avenue. He took the elevator to the third floor, and was headed toward the library, when he encountered a middle-aged man in a wrinkled tan suit who had stepped out of a side room.
“Kurt Austin, as I live and breathe!” the man said.
“I wondered if I'd bump into you, Mac.”
“Always a good chance of that around here. I practically live within these walls. How's the pride ofNUMA these days?”
“Fine. How's the Smithsonian's answer to St. Julien Perlmutter?”
MacDougal chortled at the question. Tall and lean, with fine sandy hair and a hawk-nose that dominated his narrow face, he was the physical antithesis of the portly Perlmutter. But what he lacked in girth he made up for with an encyclopedic knowledge of air history that was every bit the equivalent of Perlmutter's grasp of the sea.
“St. Julien carries much more, um, weight in the historical world than I do,” he said, with a twinkle in his gray eyes. “What brings you into the rarified atmosphere of the Archives Division?”
'I'm doing some research on an old airship. I was hoping I'd find something in the library."
“No need to go to the archives. I'm on my way to a meeting, but we can talk on the way.” Austin said. “Have you ever come across a mention of an airship called the Nietzsche?”
“Oh, sure. Only one airship had that name-the one that was lost on the secret polar expedition of 1935.”
“You know it, then?” He nodded. “There were rumors that the Germans had sent an airship to the North Pole on a secret mission. If it had succeeded, it was meant to cow the Allies and tout the glories of German Kultur in the propaganda war. The Germans denied it, but they couldn't ex- plain the disappearance of two of their greatest airship pioneers, Heinrich Braun and Herman Lutz. The war came along, and the sto- ries faded.”
“So that was it?” “Oh no. After the war, papers were discovered that suggested strongly that the flight had indeed taken place, with an airship sim- ilar to the Graf Zeppelin. The airship supposedly sent a radio message as it neared the pole. They had discovered something of interest on the ice.”
“They didn't say what?” “No. And some people believe it was a
fabrication, anyhow. Maybe something Josef Goebbels made up.”
“Butyo believe the accounts.” “It's entirely possible. Certainly the technology was there.”
“What could have happened to the airship?” “There are all sorts of possibilities. Engine failure. Sudden storm. Ice. Human error. The Graf Zeppelin was a highly successful aircraft, but we're talking about operating in extreme conditions. Other air- ships have come to similar fates. It could have crashed into the pack ice, been carried hundreds of miles away and gone into the sea when the ice melted.” His face lit up. “Don't tell me! You've found traces of it at the bottom of the sea?”
“Unfortunately, no. Someone mentioned it to me... and, well, my scientific curiosity got the better of me.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” He stopped in front of a door. “Here's my meeting. Come by again and we'll talk some more.” “I will. Thanks for your help.”
Austin was glad that Mac wasn't pressing him further. He didn't like being evasive with old friends.
MacDougal paused with his hand on the doorknob. "The fact that we're talking about the Arctic is a funny coincidence. There's a big reception tonight to open a new exhibition on Eskimo culture and art.
'People of the Frozen North,' or something like that. Dogsled races, the whole thing."
“Dogsled races in Washington?”
“I said the same thing, but apparently it's so. Why don't you come by and see for yourself? ”
“I may just do that.”
As he was leaving the museum, Austin stopped at the information booth and picked up a brochure for the exhibition, which was in fact called Denizens of the Frozen North. The opening night reception was by invitation only. He ran his eye down the brochure and stopped at the name of the sponsor: Oceanus.
He tucked the brochure in his pocket and drove back to his office. A few calls later, he had wrangled an invitation, and, after working awhile longer on his report to Gunn, he went home to change. As he walked past the bookshelves in his combined living room-library, he ran his fingers along the spines of the neatly shelved volumes. The voices of Aristotle, Dante and Locke seemed to speak to him.
Austin's fascination with the great philosophers went back to his college days and the influence of a thought-provoking professor. Later, philosophy provided a distraction from his work and helped shed light on the darker elements of the human soul. In the course of his assignments, Austin had killed men and injured others. His sense of duty, justice and self-preservation had shielded him from crippling, and perhaps dangerous, self-doubt. But Austin was not a callous man, and philosophy gave him a moral compass to follow when he examined the rightness of his actions.
He extracted a thick volume, flicked on the stereo so that the liq- uid notes flowed from John Coltrane's saxophone, then went out on the deck and settled into a chair. Riffling through the pages, he quickly found the quote he'd been thinking about since MacDougal had mentioned a blimp named Nietzsche.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you lool into an abyss, the abyss also loofs into you.
He stared off into space for a few moments, wondering if he had seen the abyss, or more important, whether it was looking back at him. Then he closed the book, put it back on the shelf and went to get ready for the reception.
NUMA 4 - White Death
24
A HUGE BANNER EMBLAZONED with the words Denizens of the Frozen North was draped over the Mall entrance to the National Museum of Natural History. Painted on the banner, so there would be no mistaking the subject of the show, were figures in hooded fur parkas riding dogsleds across a forbidding Arctic land- scape. Mountainous hulking icebergs loomed in the background.
Austin walked between the portico columns and stepped into the museum's expansive octagonal rotunda. At the center of the eighty- foot-wide space was a masterpiece of taxidermy, an African elephant charging across an imaginary savanna. The twelve-ton animal dwarfed the petite decent standing under its upraised trunk.
“Good evening,” the young woman said with a smile, handing Austin a program. She was wearing a lightweight facsimile of tradi- tional Eskimo dress. "Welcome to the Denizens of the Frozen North exhibition. Go through that door and you'll see the displays in the special exhibition hall. A movie on Eskimo culture will be showing every twenty minutes in the I max Theater. The sled dog and harpoon competitions will be held on the Mall in about fifteen minutes.
Should be quite exciting!"
Austin thanked the guide and trailed the guests into the special ex- hibit area. The well-lit display cases were filled with Eskimo art- work and ivory carvings, tools for hunting and fishing, cleverly fashioned skin suits and boots that would keep their owners warm and dry in the coldest of Arctic temperatures, driftwood sleds, canoes and whaleboats. A doleful chant backed by the beat of a tom-tom came from speakers scattered around the hall.
The chattering crowd was the usual combination of Washington politicians, bureaucrats and press. For all its importance in the world, Washington was still a small town, and Austin recognized a number of familiar faces. He was talking to a historian from the Navy Mu- seum who was a kayak enthusiast, when he heard his name called. Angus MacDougal from the Air and Space Museum was making his way through the milling guests. He took Austin's arm.
“Come over here, Kurt, there's someone I want you to meet.” He led Austin to a dignified-looking gray-haired man and intro- duced him as Charles Gleason, the curator of the exhibition.
“I told Chuck that you were interested in Eskimos,” MacDougal said.
“Actually, they prefer to be called 'Inuit; which means, 'the Peo- ple,' ” Gleason said. “ 'Eskimo was a name the Indians gave them. It means 'eaters of raw flesh.' Their name for themselves is 'Nakooruk; which means 'good.' ” He smiled. “Sorry for the lec- ture. I taught college for many years, and the pedagogue in me keeps reasserting itself.”
“No apology necessary,” Austin said. “I never resist the opportu- nity to learn something new.”
“That's very kind of you. Do you have any questions on the exhi- bition?”
“I was wondering about the sponsor,” Austin said. He read the placard stating that items in the case were on loan from Oceanus, and he decided to take a long shot. “I've heard the head of Oceanus is a man named Toonook.”
Toonook?
“That's right.”
Gleason gave him a wary look. “You're serious?”
“Very. I'd like to meet the gentleman.”
Gleason replied with a strange half smile and made a sound be- tween a chortle and a snicker. Unable to contain himself, he burst forth with a loud guffaw. “Sorry,” he said, “but I'd hardly call Toonook a gentleman. Toonook is the Inuit name of an evil spirit. He's considered to be the creator and destroyer.”
“You're saying Toonook is a mythological name?”
“That's right. The Inuit say he's in the sea, the earth and the air. Every time there's an unexpected noise, like the ice cracking under- foot, it's Toonook, looking for a victim. When the wind howls like a pack of hungry wolves, it's Toonook.”
Austin was confused. Toonook was the name Therri had given him as the head of Oceanus. “I can see why my question made you laugh,” Austin said, with an embarrassed smile. “I must have mis- understood.”
“There's no misunderstanding as far as the Inuit are concerned,” Gleason said. “When they travel alone, they keep an eye out for Toonook. They carry a bone knife and wave it around to keep Toonook at bay.”
Austin's eye drifted past Gleason's shoulder. “Something like the little pig sticker in that display case?”
Gleason tapped the glass in front of the ornately carved white blade. “That's a very rare and unusual item.”
“In what way?” "Most Inuit knives were tools mainly used for skinning. That
knife was made with one purpose: to kill other human beings.“ ”Odd,“ Austin said, ”I had always heard that the
Eskimos were a peaceful and good-natured people."
“Very true. They live in close quarters in a harsh and demanding environment where tempers could easily flare into violence. They know cooperation is vital to survival, and so they've evolved a whole set of rituals and customs to diffuse aggression.” “That knife looks about as aggressive as it gets.” Gleason nodded in agreement. “The Inuit are subject to the same dark passions as the rest of humankind. The people who made that weapon were from a tribe that broke the peaceful mold. We think they came from Siberia in prehistoric times and settled in northern Quebec. They tended toward rape, pillage, human sacrifice... very nasty. The other communities banded together many years ago and drove them off. They named them 'Kiolya.' ”
“Doesn't ring a bell.”
“It's the Inuit name for the aurora borealis, which the Arctic peo- ple regard as the manifestation of evil. The real name of the tribe, no one knows.”
“What happened to the Kiolya?”
“They scattered around Canada. Many of them ended up in the cities, where their descendants formed criminal enterprises. Murder for hire and extortion, mainly. Some of them retained their old tribal customs, such as the vertical tattoos over the cheekbones, until they found that it identified them easily to the police.”
“I'm curious. How is an exhibition like this pulled together?”
“In many different ways. With this one, a public relations firm from Oceanus approached the museum and asked if we would be in- terested in placing the show. They said the sponsors had a strong in- terest in educating the public on Inuit culture, and they would organize the exhibition and pay all costs. Well, we couldn't resist. It's a fascinating show, don't you think?”
Austin stared at the Kiolya knife, which was identical to the weapon that had slashed his chest open at the Faroe Islands fish farm. He was thinking about the vertical tattoos on the face of the man who'd wielded the knife. “Yes, fascinating,” he said.
“Since I can't introduce you to Toonook, perhaps you'd like to meet the representative from Oceanus.”