What am I supposed to say?’ said Jack, throwing his hands into the air. ‘What the hell d’you want me to say?’
He was seated in Tammy’s office on the first afternoon after the murder. ‘That I’m sorry about Kingston? Of course I’m fucking sorry.’
‘Sorry - !’ she scoffed. ‘Too late to be sorry. Kingston’s dead, butchered, murdered, and nothing’s ever going to bring him back.’
Jack leaned backwards in his chair. The way she was speaking, Christ, she sounded like Karin on her last night.
‘Kingston was the kindest person on earth. He was my friend. He was the only honest person in this place. And now he’s dead.’
‘Tammy,’ he said, looking directly at her. ‘I could not be more sorry. I was wrong. I admit it. Wrong about everything. But I had my reasons. And it wasn’t exactly all my doing. You’re dumping it all on me. What about Tom, Hunter, Gonzales? This would have happened even if I hadn’t been here.’
‘I blame myself,’ she said with a sigh. Her expression was caught somewhere between anger and sorrow. ‘Should have listened to the voice in my own head.’
*
The weather had once again turned stormy, with a battalion of thunder clouds stacked up on the western flank of the sky. When Jack had driven into Hanford at lunchtime, a few splats of rain had hit the windscreen like flak then vaporized into the heat. The rolling hills of the scrubland had taken on a tinge of diluted green, like they’d been washed with watercolour.
It was just after five o’clock when they gathered once again in the conference room. Tom Lawyer addressed them first: he had very little to say. There had been no sightings, no one in Hanford Gap had noticed anything untoward. The ice man had simply disappeared.
‘Jon and I agree that Jack should stay on.’
Jack smiled to himself. In the hours since Kingston’s murder he’d seen a subtle change in Tom’s behaviour. Outright hostility had turned to grudging acceptance. All talk of plane tickets to London had been dropped. And now he was being invited to join the team. Tom was no longer working from a position of strength.
Jack had noticed another change, one he’d first detected on his first full day at ZAKRON. Tom’s new target was Gonzales. He’d been selected as the one to carry the can.
‘Jack, anything to add?’
Jim Bartholomew was nodding, as if in agreement with Tom’s question.
‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Brace yourself. We’re dealing with someone who’s committed dozens of atrocities, summary executions, that sort of thing. He fought in northern France and Soviet Russia. Served in special operations. And I’ve got a name for you.’
Their heads turned sharply towards him.
‘Hans Dietrich.’
He handed round the photo that he had printed off his laptop. The quality was not great, but good enough for everyone to see the striking resemblance. The ice man and SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Dietrich were visibly one and the same.
Jack watched their reaction with interest. They all flinched when he said the name, as an abstract was suddenly turned to concrete. Hans Dietrich. The name transformed him into a real person.
‘What more?’
‘It seems as if six men went on a mission to Greenland. Emil Lorenz, Ludolf Gebhardt, Kurt Becker, Joachim Ulrich, Otto Streckenbach and, of course, Hans Dietrich.’
Sergeant Perez was nodding to himself.
‘I don’t know what they were doing there. I can’t tell you why these six were chosen. But you don’t send your most elite soldiers to Greenland unless they have something pretty important to accomplish.’
He paused for a moment, then told them about the information he had received from USMOD, Ferris Clark’s organization.
‘Ferris Clark!’ Tom snapped out his name as if he was an intruder in the room. ‘What in hell’s name has he got to do with it?’
Jack swung his chair round towards Hunter.
‘It’s you, Hunter, I should thank. You got me back on the trail of Ferris Clark.’
Hunter looked at him blankly.
‘Remember what you said? Yesterday. Ferris Clark, Ferris Clark, Ferris Clark. You told us not to give up on Ferris Clark. Well I haven’t.’
There was a long silence. Jack could see from their faces that they didn’t get it at all.
‘Could you enlighten us?’ said Tom, his voice leaden with sarcasm. ‘Is the ice man Hans Dietrich or is he Ferris Clark?’
Jack tapped his pen on the table.
‘It’s just as I’ve told you, the ice man is Hans Dietrich of the SS Totenkopf. But Ferris Clark – here - look -’
He clicked on his iPad, brought up a picture on screen.
‘Take a look at this -’
He held it up and showed it round. ‘Can you all see?’
They nodded.
‘This is Ferris Clark. Always good to put a name to a face.’
The picture looked as if it had been taken when Ferris was still a student, eighteen or nineteen. Round glasses, baby face and a neatly combed fringe, like mum had spruced him up for the camera. He was wearing a suit, tie, collared shirt, and appeared to be seated in a laboratory, hands folded neatly under the table. The pose said it all. A diligent student, one who knew the chemical elements by heart. Shy with college boys, blushed with college girls. The air of a loner.
Ferris Clark was probably boring as fuck. That’s what Hunter had said. But Jack now knew that this was very wide of the mark. The USMOD information suggested that Ferris Clark was brilliantly gifted and possessed of a formidable intellect. Perhaps even a genius.
‘Hold on - hold on -’
Tom raised his hands into the air, not understanding a thing. His face had taken on a peculiar hue, grey with tiredness yet also flushed with stress. Jack noticed that his eyes were bloodshot; he hadn’t found time to change his contact lenses.
‘Can we hit rewind? One minute you’re telling us it’s not Ferris Clark, the next you’re showing us shots of Ferris Clark.’ He looked round the room. ‘Is it just me or is everyone lost? I’m somewhere down on the Mexican border.’
Jack began to explain.
‘Ferris Clark. Studied here in Hanford till twelfth grade. We don’t know much about his time at high school, except that he seems to have been exceptionally gifted. Aged seventeen or thereabouts he’s snapped up by North Carolina State University. It’s in Raleigh, as I’m sure you know. Best place for meteorology, least it was in those days. And he was their most brilliant student.’
Jim Bartholomew reached out across the table and clutched his hand around the neck of a bottle of carbonated water. He pulled it towards him and unscrewed the cap with his plump fingers, breaking the metal fastening with a clack and letting it drop onto the table. The water fizzed and sent a fine spray across the table. He wiped it with his handkerchief then turned back to listen to Jack.
‘Ferris Clark was a brilliant student. One of the best. And before long he was in correspondence with all the great weathermen of the time. Bergeron, Douglas, Pettersen, Harding. Seems to have known them personally. He wrote several key papers on the development of showers and thunderstorms. And also wrote key papers on -’
He turned his iPad round so that he could read from the screen.
‘Wrote key papers on the creation and movement of weather fronts. He believed these could be found in the horizontal movements of air that are associated with large depressions and anticyclones.’
Ryan gave a deliberate yawn. ‘Is this relevant?’
Jack stared hard.
‘Absolutely crucial. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand the detail. Just listen.’
He told them how Ferris Clark had pioneered the use of aneroid balloons, getting data from higher in the atmosphere than ever before. He’d noticed a discrepancy between the surface winds and upper winds and realised you could produce highly accurate forecasts if you had accurate readings of these different sets of winds.
Tom drummed his fingers on the table.
‘And then he developed a system of prognostic charting. In laymen’s terms, he was using previous weather patterns to predict future ones. All very primitive compared to today’s forecasting, but a work of genius for the nineteen forties.’
He paused.
‘One other thing I learned from the Washington stuff. Ferris Clark had a photographic memory. Had more than a decade’s forecasts stored in his head. Memory. Prodigious skill. And brilliance.’
Jack ticked them off like they were on a list.
Jim B swept his hand around the room.
‘Please. I’m lost.’
‘Remember,’ said Jack. ‘The Nazi weather stations in Greenland have been destroyed by this point in the war. And not knowing the North Atlantic weather forecast spells potential disaster for Hitler. So he sends a team of his most brilliant SS officers, including Hans Dietrich, to rectify this.’
Tom butted in, shaking his head from side to side.
‘Nope. Still don’t get it.’ You could hear the frustration in his voice. ‘You’re saying Hans Dietrich killed Ferris Clark? Or Ferris Clark killed Hans Dietrich?’
Jack shrugged.
‘A lot doesn’t add up.’
All the while he’d been talking, Tammy had been toying with her cell phone, flicking from Twitter to Facebook and then back to Twitter. Now, as she scrolled down the screen, she gulped loudly.
‘No!’
She froze.
‘What - ? What is it - ?’
‘What’s happened - ?’
‘Oh my God. Breaking news. On Twitter. There’s been a murder.’