“Brian didn’t fall and knock himself unconscious, and he wasn’t left behind by accident. Someone struck him on the back of the head. Twice.”
Pete was speechless. His line of work didn’t usually require him to carry a sidearm, either.
As quickly as he could, Harry recounted the conversation that he’d had with Brian in the snowmobile cabin a few hours ago.
“Jesus!” Pete said. “And you thought I might be the one.”
“Yeah. Although I didn’t suspect you as much as I do some of the others.”
“You thought I might go for your throat a minute ago.”
“I’m sorry. I like you a hell of a lot, Pete. But I’ve known you only eight or nine months, after all. There could be things you’ve hidden from me, certain attitudes, prejudices—“
Pete shook his head. “Hey, you don’t have to explain yourself. You had no reason to trust me further than you did the others. I’m not asking for an apology. I’m just saying you’ve got guts. You aren’t exactly a little guy, but physically I’m more than a match for you.”
Harry had to look up to see Pete’s face, and suddenly his friend seemed more of a giant than ever before. Shoulders almost too broad for a conventional doorway. Massive arms. If he had accepted those offers to play pro football, he would have been a formidable presence on the field, and if a polar bear showed up now, he might be able to give it a good fight.
“If I’d been this psycho,” Pete said, “and if I’d decided to kill you here and now, you wouldn’t have had much chance.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t have a choice. I needed one more ally, and you were the best prospect. By the way, thanks for not tearing my head off.”
Pete coughed and spat in the snow. “I’ve changed my mind about you, Harry. You don’t have a hero complex after all. This is just perfectly natural for you, this kind of courage. You’re built this way. This is how you came into the world.”
“I only did what I had to do,” Harry said impatiently. “So long as we were stranded on this iceberg, so long as it appeared that we were all going to die at midnight, I thought Rita and I could watch over Brian. I figured our would-be killer might take advantage of any opening we gave him at the boy, but I didn’t think he’d bother to engineer any opportunities. But with this submarine on the way… Well, if he thinks Brian will be rescued, he might do something bold. He might make another attempt on the boy’s life, even if he has to reveal himself to do it. And I need someone besides Rita and me to help stop him when the time comes.”
“And I’ve been nominated.”
“Congratulations.”
A whirl of wind crested the ridge and swooped down on them. They lowered their heads while a column of spinning snow passed over them, so dense that it seemed almost like an avalanche. For a few seconds they were blinded and deafened. Then the squall-within-a-storm passed out of the open end of the crescent ridge.
Pete said, “So far as you’re concerned, is there any one of them we should watch more closely than the others?”
“I ought to have asked you that question. I already know what Rita, Brian and I think. I need a fresh perspective.”
Pete didn’t have to ponder the question to come up with an answer. “George Lin,” he said at once.
“That was my own first choice.”
“Not first and last? So you think he’s too obvious?”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t rule him out.”
“What’s wrong with him, anyway? I mean, the way he acts with Brian, the anger—what’s that all about?”
“I’m not sure,” Harry said. “Something happened to him in China when he was a child, very young. It must’ve been in the last days of Chiang’s rule, something traumatic. He seems to connect Brian to that, because of his family’s politics.”
“And the pressure we’ve been under these past nine hours might have snapped him.”
“I suppose it’s possible.”
“But it doesn’t feel right.”