Final Winter

Victor Palmer was in the kitchen of his small apartment, about a half-hour drive from his Tiger Team’s offices. He had just finished breakfast and unread copies of the day’s Washington Post and Baltimore Sun were on the kitchen counter in front of him. Next to the newspapers was a cellphone, a bulky object that most kids would have sneered at for being large and ungainly and without a camera included in the handset.

Ah, but if those benighted children only knew the things this cellphone could do, the way its classified technology allowed one to make an encrypted and untraceable phone call with the greatest of ease.

He picked up the phone, looked at the keypad, and then started scrolling through the directory until he reached a number beginning with a 404 area code. He keyed the dial pad and brought the phone up to his ear.

It rang twice. On the third ring, a woman’s voice answered: ‘CDC, operator four, may I help you?’

He gave her a four-number extension. Waited.

‘You have reached the Alpha Directory,’ an automated voice said. ‘Please enter the subsequent extension.’

Take a breath. Could drop the phone here, leave. The call unfulfilled. Miss the late-afternoon meeting with the rest of the Tiger Team. Head north. Maybe Canada. Nice simple village. Probably could survive Final Winter or anything else. Nice Canada. Quiet country. Nobody lining up to fly airliners into the CN Tower in Toronto or the Parliament building in Ottawa or to drive suicide trucks into embassy buildings. In this bloody new century, there was something to be said about living in a country that didn’t attract so much hate.

The voice returned. ‘You have reached the Alpha Directory. Please enter the subsequent extension.’

He sighed. Slowly keyed in the six numbers. Waited again.

There was a low-pitched tone, followed by a series of high-pitched ones. The encryption device in his government-issued cellphone, synchronizing with the encryption device at the other end. Hey, how you doin’? One phone to another. Boy, wouldn’t Doc Savage be impressed with that. And maybe this phone’s being answered in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, but maybe not. Doubtful such delicate work as this anthrax vaccine went on in Atlanta, though everything obviously went through the central phone station and—

A man’s voice. Definitely not automated.

‘Harrison.’

Victor cleared his throat. ‘This is Doctor Palmer calling. I need a status report on the packages you’re developing.’

‘Hold on.’

Victor waited. Looked around the rented apartment, the rented kitchen, the rented kitchen table. Rented by someone whose soul was being rented. How goddamn appropriate. He closed his eyes. Hoping that Harrison would say it wouldn’t work. Hoping Harrison would say that the whole Final Winter scheme had been overruled. Hoping Harrison was struck dead by a coronary before coming back with—

Harrison returned to the phone. ‘Slightly ahead of schedule. The canisters will be in place at the Upper Mississippi Delta Storage Facility in two weeks.’

‘Two weeks,’ Victor said. ‘Got it.’

‘Good.’ Then a pause, as if the prim-and-proper government man just had to know. ‘Ask you a question?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is… is this really going to happen?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘God help us all.’

Victor said, ‘Think God’s a bit busy nowadays.’

And then he hung up.

~ * ~

In the Pacific Ocean near Vancouver Island it was barely daylight as the ferry plowed its way through the cold waters, heading through a fog bank. The visitor stood at the bow, bundled up, hands in his pockets, seeing nothing but the tendrils of gray swirling around him. The wide bow of the ferry rode up and down in the waves, and the visitor kept his balance on the trembling deck.

A movement at his elbow. The young man called Imad Hakim stood there next to him, shivering, wearing a long wool coat and gloves, a hat and scarf wrapped around the top of his head. Imad held a cup of tea in his gloved hands, the steam rising up past his dark face.

Imad muttered something and the visitor said, ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, I cannot believe how cold it can get in this cursed land, that’s what,’ Imad said. ‘I spent six years here, growing up with my mother’s brother, and still I can’t get used to the cold. I feel like my balls have turned to ice.’

He stood there, proud that he could stand next to this barbarian who kept his head uncovered. The man said: ‘Cold? This is nothing. I will tell you what cold is, my friend. Cold is when you step outside and you spit into the snow, and you hear a crackle as your spittle freezes before it hits the ground. Cold is when you can shatter metal with a sharp blow of a hammer. Cold is when the slightest bit of exposed skin turns deathly white from frostbite, in a matter of moments. That is cold. This…this is nothing.’

‘Bah,’ Imad said. ‘You stay out here if you like. I’m going back inside to try and get warm. If that is possible.’

‘Very well. Go back, then, and dream of camels. If that is what you dream of.’