Nina smiled. ‘Sleep’ll be enough for tonight.’ A pause. ‘And some talking, I think.’
‘Yeah, I think so too.’ He let out a heavy breath as they headed through the ship’s passageways.
Neither spoke again until they reached the compact cabin. Eddie shut the door, then gestured for Nina to take a chair before folding himself to sit on the lower bunk. ‘Well, then,’ she said, feeling suddenly awkward. There was a very obvious question to ask, the words almost screaming inside her head — did you murder Natalia? — but she couldn’t voice it. Instead, she asked: ‘What Hoyt said, about you and Natalia in Vietnam — what actually happened?’
Eddie took a long breath before replying. ‘Hoyt’s boss, Lock — he was behind everything. He set up the job in Vietnam by pretending to be Natalia’s dad, and he planted Hoyt in our team as his inside man. They wanted to get hold of the Russian research on Natalia’s DNA, and keep her for themselves. I stopped them from getting either of them — I burned the research.’
‘And what about Natalia?’ Seconds passed without an answer. ‘Eddie?’ she prompted.
Another sighing breath. ‘Remember that I told you in Russia how Natalia was infected by the eitr?’
‘Yes, her grandfather poisoned her grandmother with it.’ The thought that a person could do something so utterly reckless and immoral — no, outright evil — in the name of science chilled her.
‘Natalia knew about it, and had sort of accepted it; it’s why she was in Vietnam in the first place, trying to help kids with birth defects from Agent Orange. And she was also a pacifist. Not just in a wishy-washy “ooh, war is bad” kind of way like a lot of people who’ve never actually seen it for real, but totally against any kind of weapon of mass destruction, and willing to sacrifice herself for what she believed. So when she found out someone might be able to make the same stuff that was slowly killing her from her own DNA and turn it into a WMD, well…’
His silence let Nina reach her own conclusions. ‘She… she asked you to kill her? To stop them from using her DNA to recreate the eitr?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s the promise you made to her, isn’t it? To make sure they couldn’t turn her body into a weapon?’
‘Yeah,’ he said again. ‘She thought that no matter where she went, sooner or later either the Russians or Lock’s people would find her and take what they wanted. She wasn’t willing to let that happen.’ He looked down at the floor. ‘She told me to kill her. She begged me to kill her.’
‘And you… you actually did it?’
‘I did what she asked me to do.’
‘Jesus, Eddie!’ Nina exclaimed, shocked by the revelation even as it confirmed her fears. ‘Hoyt wasn’t lying? You killed her?’
‘You wanted to know what happened in Vietnam,’ Eddie said, voice flat. ‘There you go. I made a promise to Natalia, and I kept it.’
A lengthy silence filled the room. He looked up at her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Am I okay?’ she echoed in disbelief. ‘I don’t… God, Eddie, I have no idea what to say. I don’t even know what to think. I never — I never thought you could do something like that. Even if Natalia asked you to do it, and you were doing it to stop Lock from getting hold of a horrible weapon… my God. I really don’t…’
Her voice trailed away as the full enormity of what she had learned sank in. Whatever the justification, even though Natalia had begged him to do it… her husband had killed an innocent young woman. The thought filled her head, tendrils winding deeply into six years of memories. Everything he had done since their first meeting would now be recoloured by that knowledge…
‘Nina?’ She blinked in surprise, finding him regarding her gloomily. ‘So…’
She stood. ‘I don’t know how to take this, Eddie. I don’t even know if I can.’ The walls of the already claustrophobic little room seemed to be inching inwards. She took a deep breath, trying to empty her mind. ‘Okay. Okay. Right now, I don’t want to deal with this. We’ve got a mission we need to complete first. Once that’s done… I don’t know. We’ll see. For the moment, I just want to go to bed and try to forget what you just told me, at least for tonight.’
Eddie looked deflated. ‘Okay. Nina, if Thor’s Hammer works and we neutralise the eitr, I’ll tell you—’
She held up a hand. ‘I don’t want to hear any more, Eddie. Please. I’m not sure if I can take it.’
A mournful nod, then he got up. ‘You want the bottom bed?’ he asked, gesturing at the lower bunk.
‘Yeah, thanks.’ There should not have been enough space in the cabin even with Eddie pressing back against the wall for her to pass without touching him, but somehow she managed it. Like the two halves of the sun compass, it was as if they could no longer approach each other without an invisible force driving them apart.
Nina’s sleep was fitful at best, the rocking of the ship and the constant rumble of machinery rousing her all too frequently. But while she eventually tuned out these distractions, an insistent banging on the cabin door was something she could not ignore. ‘What?’ she called blearily.
‘I think we are there,’ came Kagan’s muffled voice from outside. ‘Come to the bridge.’
That snapped her to full wakefulness. ‘I’ll be right there.’ She sat up in the bed — only to knock her forehead on the underside of Eddie’s bunk. ‘Ow! God damn it.’
‘That’s one way to wake up,’ said Eddie as he switched on a light and hopped down to the floor.
‘What time is it?’
‘Too bloody early.’ His backside was right beside Nina as she swung her legs from the bed. She reached up to give it a playful swat — only for her hand to flinch back almost of its own accord as she remembered what he had told her the previous night. Subdued, she rose and got dressed, again managing not to make contact with her husband even in the confined space.
They made their way up to the research vessel’s bridge to find Kagan and Berkeley already there. Nina frowned as she peered through the windows to see… absolutely nothing. ‘It’s still pitch black.’ At such a high latitude in winter, the nights were very long.
‘Yes,’ said Kagan, with a faint smile, ‘but the ship has radar and night-vision equipment.’ He picked up a set of image-intensifier goggles and switched them on. ‘Wear these.’
Nina donned the goggles, squinting as she refocused on the glowing green image inside the lenses. The coastline was now clearly visible, even the extremely dim illumination of an overcast night more than enough for the device to amplify. ‘What do you see?’ Eddie asked.
‘I see… what we’re looking for,’ she replied. ‘I think.’
Three mountains were visible, two flanking a small craggy bay with a third, somewhat taller, rising beyond them. Judging distance was hard through the goggles, but the largest of the three peaks was clearly some way inland. The land before it was a crumpled blanket of ridges and troughs, the covering of snow only broken by patches of almost sheer rock. There was not a trace of vegetation.
She passed the goggles to Eddie. ‘Logan, let me see the compass.’
Berkeley did so. ‘Hurry up, Chase, I want a look,’ he complained as the Englishman surveyed the scene. ‘Does it match the pictogram?’
Nina compared the green-tinted view in her mind to what was inscribed on the disc. The little pictogram was massively simplified, but it did indeed closely resemble the island’s topography. ‘Yeah, it does. Two mountains beside a bay, and a bigger one behind them.’