“Somebody told me you were an enigmalogist. I haven’t heard of that particular, ah, discipline.”

“Nobody else has, either. My wife gave me that title once, in a playful moment.” Logan shrugged. “It helps remind me of her.”

“What does it have to do with medieval history?”

“Very little. But being a history professor is quite useful. It opens doors, discourages questions-most of the time, anyway.” He hesitated. “I solve mysteries. Explain the unexplained: the stranger and more bizarre, the better. Sometimes I do it professionally, for a fee. Other times-like now-I’m on my own nickel.”

Marshall sipped his tea. “Wouldn’t teaching history bring in a more regular paycheck?”

“Money’s not really an issue. Anyway, the jobs I do for others tend to pay extremely well-especially those I’m not allowed to write up in the professional journals.” He stood. “Excuse me, I think I’ll try the tea.”

Marshall waited while Logan fixed himself a cup, returned to the table. He moved with easy, graceful motions more appropriate to an athlete than a professor. “How much do you know about Fear Base?” he asked as he sat down again.

“As much as anybody does, I suppose. An early warning station, designed to guard against a preemptive Russian attack. Decommissioned in the late 1950s when the SAGE system went online.”

“Did you know that, while it was still in active use, it briefly housed a team of scientists?”

Marshall frowned. “No.”

Logan sipped his tea. “Last week I gained access to a newly declassified archive of government documents. I was researching something else-medieval history, as it happens-and was looking for some relevant army records from the Second World War. I found them, all right. But I found something else as well.”

He took another sip. “Specifically, I found a report from a Colonel Rose, written to an army board of inquiry. Rose was the commander of Fear Base at the time. It was a short report-a summary, really. He was scheduled to fly to Washington a few weeks later to make a more detailed report in person.”

“Go on.”

“The report had been misfiled. It was stuffed behind the file I’d been looking for, unread and obviously forgotten for half a century. As I said, it was very brief. But it mentioned the fact that the scientific team attached to Fear Base died very abruptly, over a two-day period in April 1958.”

“The entire team?”

Logan made a suppressing motion with his hand. “No, that’s not quite correct. There were eight members of the team. Seven died.”

“And the eighth?” Marshall asked more quietly.

“Rose’s report doesn’t specify what happened to him-or her.”

“What were they doing up here?”

“I don’t know the details. All that Rose said is that they were analyzing an anomaly of some kind.”

“Anomaly?”

“That’s what he called it. And his recommendation was that the research be immediately suspended and no second team sent up to continue it.”

Marshall stared thoughtfully at his empty cup. “Did you learn anything else? The name of the surviving scientist, for example?”

“Nothing. There was no other record, official or unofficial, of any science team at Fear Base. I searched carefully-and believe me, Evan, I’ve had a lot of practice uncovering lost or hidden information. But a couple of things particularly intrigued me.” He leaned in closer. “First, there were two copies of the report stuffed in behind that file I mentioned-I can only assume that one was meant for the archive, and the other had been destined for the Pentagon. Second, the tone of Colonel Rose’s report. Even though it was nothing more than a sober government memo, you could almost smell the hysteria. When he made the urgent recommendation that no more scientists be sent up, he really meant it: urgent.”

“So what about the detailed report he made in Washington later? That must have been documented.”

“He never made any report. He died ten days later, in a plane crash on the way down to Fort Richardson.”

“That second copy of the report…” Marshall began. Then he stopped. “So the whole thing was just forgotten.”

“The secret died with the scientists. And Colonel Rose.”

“But are you sure? That nobody else knew about it, I mean?”

“If they did, they kept their mouths shut and they’re now long dead. Otherwise, do you really suppose the army would have let you and your team use Fear Base?”

Marshall shook his head. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Logan smiled faintly. “Now you see what I mean about the wisdom of keeping mum?”

For a moment, Marshall didn’t reply. Then he glanced over at Logan. “So why, exactly, are you here, Jeremy?”

“To do what I do best. Solve the mystery. Find out what happened to those scientists.” He drained his own cup. “You’re right-this tea’s not bad. Care for another cup?”

But Marshall didn’t answer. He was thinking.

20

The shudder of a slamming door; a shake of the mattress; a rough jostling of his shoulder. Josh Peters stretched, plucked the buds from his ears. As his dream and the pianistic musings of McCoy Tyner both faded into memory, the sounds of reality-and Fear Base-returned: distant clangs, the incessant tapping of the heating pipes, and the impatient voice of his roommate, Blaine.

“Josh. Hey, Josh. Get the hell up.”

Peters snapped off his music player and blinked his eyes open. Blaine ’s red, wind-chapped face swam into focus.

“What?” Peters mumbled.

“What ‘what’? It’s your turn, man. I’ve been out in that shit for an hour.”

Peters struggled to a sitting position, then collapsed again back onto the cot.

“You’d better hurry up. It’s past nine and you wouldn’t want Wolff to catch you still racked out.”

That did it. Peters got up from the bed and rubbed his face vigorously with his hands.

“The whole thing’s crazy,” Blaine said in a petulant voice. “We’ve been searching an entire day already. Nobody’s going to find anything in that storm. Just do what I did: walk in circles, look busy, and try to keep your ass from freezing.”

Peters didn’t reply. He tugged on a shirt and stepped into his shoes. Maybe he could remain half asleep through this, then return to his bunk and pick up where he’d left off: a delightful reverie in which Ashleigh Davis had been rubbing hazelnut-infused massage oil-the edible kind-all over…

“When we get back, the union’s going to hear about this. I mean, I’m supposed to be maintaining the digital library and logging takes, not out searching for the abominable snowman. And another thing. Why are they making us look outside? Why can’t we be like Fortnum and Toussaint, searching the lockers?”

“Because we’re PAs. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.” And Peters shuffled out, shoes untied, leaving the door wide open.

He made his way, in a somnambulistic haze, along the corridors and up an echoing stairwell to the entrance plaza. It was deserted except for the army engineer manning the security station. Peters gave a desultory wave as he shuffled into the weather chamber, opened his locker, and put on his parka. Blaine was right: this was bullshit. To begin with, half of the base was off-limits to them. If he had wanted to hide the carcass, he’d make sure to find a way to stow it someplace the others wouldn’t be allowed to search. Or in the quarters of the army guys, maybe-they probably wouldn’t be much inclined to let a bunch of faggoty film types paw over all their gear. But the bottom line was, only an idiot would stow the creature inside the base. Not only were there too many pairs of eyes everywhere, but the place was warm and humid enough to grow orchids. A carcass hidden somewhere-especially a ten-thousand-year-old carcass-would start to stink in a matter of hours. No: anybody with half a brain would have stowed it outside.