White Death (NUMA Files 4)

"They didn't say what?" "No. And some people believe it was a fabrication, anyhow. Maybe something Josef Goebbels made up."

"Butyo believe the accounts." "It's entirely possible. Certainly the technology was there."

"What could have happened to the airship?" "There are all sorts of possibilities. Engine failure. Sudden storm. Ice. Human error. The Graf Zeppelin was a highly successful aircraft, but we're talking about operating in extreme conditions. Other air- ships have come to similar fates. It could have crashed into the pack ice, been carried hundreds of miles away and gone into the sea when the ice melted." His face lit up. "Don't tell me! You've found traces of it at the bottom of the sea?"

"Unfortunately, no. Someone mentioned it to me… and, well, my scientific curiosity got the better of me."

"I know exactly what you mean." He stopped in front of a door. "Here's my meeting. Come by again and we'll talk some more." "I will. Thanks for your help."

Austin was glad that Mac wasn't pressing him further. He didn't like being evasive with old friends.

MacDougal paused with his hand on the doorknob. "The fact that we're talking about the Arctic is a funny coincidence. There's a big reception tonight to open a new exhibition on Eskimo culture and art.

'People of the Frozen North,' or something like that. Dogsled races, the whole thing."

"Dogsled races in Washington?"

"I said the same thing, but apparently it's so. Why don't you come by and see for yourself? "

"I may just do that."

As he was leaving the museum, Austin stopped at the information booth and picked up a brochure for the exhibition, which was in fact called Denizens of the Frozen North. The opening night reception was by invitation only. He ran his eye down the brochure and stopped at the name of the sponsor: Oceanus.

He tucked the brochure in his pocket and drove back to his office. A few calls later, he had wrangled an invitation, and, after working awhile longer on his report to Gunn, he went home to change. As he walked past the bookshelves in his combined living room-library, he ran his fingers along the spines of the neatly shelved volumes. The voices of Aristotle, Dante and Locke seemed to speak to him.

Austin's fascination with the great philosophers went back to his college days and the influence of a thought-provoking professor. Later, philosophy provided a distraction from his work and helped shed light on the darker elements of the human soul. In the course of his assignments, Austin had killed men and injured others. His sense of duty, justice and self-preservation had shielded him from crippling, and perhaps dangerous, self-doubt. But Austin was not a callous man, and philosophy gave him a moral compass to follow when he examined the rightness of his actions.

He extracted a thick volume, flicked on the stereo so that the liq- uid notes flowed from John Coltrane's saxophone, then went out on the deck and settled into a chair. Riffling through the pages, he quickly found the quote he'd been thinking about since MacDougal had mentioned a blimp named Nietzsche.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you lool into an abyss, the abyss also loofs into you.

He stared off into space for a few moments, wondering if he had seen the abyss, or more important, whether it was looking back at him. Then he closed the book, put it back on the shelf and went to get ready for the reception.

24

A HUGE BANNER EMBLAZONED with the words Denizens of the Frozen North was draped over the Mall entrance to the National Museum of Natural History. Painted on the banner, so there would be no mistaking the subject of the show, were figures in hooded fur parkas riding dogsleds across a forbidding Arctic land- scape. Mountainous hulking icebergs loomed in the background.

Austin walked between the portico columns and stepped into the museum's expansive octagonal rotunda. At the center of the eighty- foot-wide space was a masterpiece of taxidermy, an African elephant charging across an imaginary savanna. The twelve-ton animal dwarfed the petite decent standing under its upraised trunk.

"Good evening," the young woman said with a smile, handing Austin a program. She was wearing a lightweight facsimile of tradi- tional Eskimo dress. "Welcome to the Denizens of the Frozen North exhibition. Go through that door and you'll see the displays in the special exhibition hall. A movie on Eskimo culture will be showing every twenty minutes in the I max Theater. The sled dog and harpoon competitions will be held on the Mall in about fifteen minutes.

Should be quite exciting!"

Austin thanked the guide and trailed the guests into the special ex- hibit area. The well-lit display cases were filled with Eskimo art- work and ivory carvings, tools for hunting and fishing, cleverly fashioned skin suits and boots that would keep their owners warm and dry in the coldest of Arctic temperatures, driftwood sleds, canoes and whaleboats. A doleful chant backed by the beat of a tom-tom came from speakers scattered around the hall.

The chattering crowd was the usual combination of Washington politicians, bureaucrats and press. For all its importance in the world, Washington was still a small town, and Austin recognized a number of familiar faces. He was talking to a historian from the Navy Mu- seum who was a kayak enthusiast, when he heard his name called. Angus MacDougal from the Air and Space Museum was making his way through the milling guests. He took Austin's arm.

"Come over here, Kurt, there's someone I want you to meet." He led Austin to a dignified-looking gray-haired man and intro- duced him as Charles Gleason, the curator of the exhibition.

"I told Chuck that you were interested in Eskimos," MacDougal said.

"Actually, they prefer to be called 'Inuit; which means, 'the Peo- ple,' " Gleason said. " 'Eskimo was a name the Indians gave them. It means 'eaters of raw flesh.' Their name for themselves is 'Nakooruk; which means 'good.' " He smiled. "Sorry for the lec- ture. I taught college for many years, and the pedagogue in me keeps reasserting itself."

"No apology necessary," Austin said. "I never resist the opportu- nity to learn something new."

"That's very kind of you. Do you have any questions on the exhi- bition?"

"I was wondering about the sponsor," Austin said. He read the placard stating that items in the case were on loan from Oceanus, and he decided to take a long shot. "I've heard the head of Oceanus is a man named Toonook."