“I didn’t say that.” She looked out to clarify. “I had an email from him about a week after that.” Of course, the email was a generic announcement about an article that was to appear in a professional journal, but Marina didn’t feel the need to supply that detail.
“So are you going to tell me what’s going on, or keep asking me questions where you already know the answers?”
“We’re trying to locate your father; he’s disappeared. Do you know where he is?” Bergstrom’s voice came out like a flat slap.
He had intoned his announcement like a death knell and for the first time, Marina felt nervous. Something odd was going on. Something she knew she wanted to stay far away from.
“Why?” she asked. Should she care? She should. She didn’t want to. “How do you know? Even I know the CIA can’t spy on Americans on American soil.”
“Special Task Team G can, because we’re part of the Counterterrorism Unit,” MacNeil interjected smoothly. “But that’s beside the point.”
“Do you know where he is?” Bergstrom asked again.
“I have no idea.”
“He’s not been at his home in Northern Michigan for over two weeks.”
Was all this because Dad was a former Russian? From well before the Cold War? That didn’t make any sense. “He could be anywhere. Traveling anywhere. When he’s not teaching a class at Tech, he travels quite a bit around the country.” As far as she knew, anyway. She didn’t really keep track.
“He’s not. We can’t find him. Would your mother know?”
“No. They’ve been divorced for more than fifteen years, and it wasn’t amicable. She’s remarried.”
Marina buried her head under the full force of water, letting it fill her ears and drown them out. This wasn’t something she wanted to be involved in. Her life was a lot easier, smoother without Victor Alexander playing any kind of role.
But here she was, trapped in a hotel room with a couple of CIA officers. And they expected her to tell them about her dad.
“You said you wanted my help. What is it you need?” Her voice remained cool, but had a sharper edge than before. They were the CIA, sure, but they needed her or they wouldn’t have waited six hours in a flooding, 40º cave to talk to her.
Although … she was planning to fly to the Far East tomorrow. There was always the chance if she didn’t cooperate they could make it difficult for her to get out of the country.
Dammit. Damn Dad! Even when she had nothing to do with him, he creeped into her business.
The sooner she answered their questions, the sooner she could return home to her regularly-scheduled life. She was going to have to be polite and brush these guys off quickly and permanently. Without pissing them off. “I thought you wanted to speak with me about the Skaladeskas,” she said, turning off the water. “You can shut the door now.”
She heard the dull thud as the door closed. While she was toweling off, Bergstrom pitched his voice so she could hear it through the door. “Yes, the Skaladeskas. Tell us what you know about them, please, Dr. Alexander … and then we’ll try to answer some of your questions—as well as we’re able, and when I don’t have to shout. Some of what we know is confidential.”
As if she’d forced him to raise his voice loud enough to be heard in the next room. Marina had never been interviewed by the CIA before, but for some reason, she was pretty certain they didn’t usually go about doing so in such an unusual way.
She stepped out of the bathroom. “The Skaladeska people were a small tribe in Taymyria—northeastern Siberia. My father was with the Skaladeskas until he came to the U.S. to study. He met my mother and they married.”
“The U.S.?” MacNeil asked from his stance at the window. “Did he spend any time in England?”
“Not that I’m aware of. What else do you want to know?”
“Are you familiar with any of their culture or language? Did your father teach you any of it?”
“Language … well, a little. I don’t know if I would remember any of it, it was so long ago.” Before Dad started drinking, and turned into a pathetic, foggy-minded, weak man she hardly knew. “I don’t have any reason to use it. I know a bit about their culture … and I have their symbol—the one they used to identify themselves—tattooed on the heel of my foot. My father had it done when I was a baby.” She’d never gotten a clear answer from him as to why he’d marked her body that way—long ago she’d concluded he must have been drunk—but she was glad he hadn’t chosen to put it somewhere visible, like her arm or ankle.
Bergstrom had practically bolted from his seat and now hung, suspended halfway between sitting and standing, by hands braced on either arm of the chair. “You have the marking of the Skaladeskas on you?” His voice quivered with some suppressed energy—not exactly enthusiastic excitement, but something more intense and solid. It was as if his brain had clicked into gear, and now the whirring inside what must be a brilliant mind, for why else would such an unexceptional man be running a team of intelligence officers, raced at top speed.
“Yes. But it doesn’t mean anything—the tribe died out decades ago. My father and two other children were the only survivors; and those other two died shortly after they were rescued from an avalanche in the mountains. Their village had been destroyed. My father is the only one left.”
She read their faces. Dammit again. “There’s more to this than I know, isn’t there?”
It was Bergstrom who spoke. “The tribe is alive and well, Dr. Alexander. As far as we have been able to glean, they may still live in a remote region of Taymyria, deep in the mountains. Or somewhere else, just as remote. One thing is sure: the tribe never died out. Your father escaped—defected—from them thirty-one years ago when he left to study abroad in Oxford, England.”
Dad lied to her. It should bother her; it would probably bother most people. But it didn’t. She’d stopped caring about his lies, as well as his promises, long ago. About when she was sixteen and he’d promised to quit drinking and buy her a little Mercury Capri if she got straight As. She got the straight As and the Capri, but kept the lush for a father. “So what does this mean?”
“As I said earlier, your father has disappeared. Because of some recent events, we believe that the Skaladeskas have—er—retrieved him and taken him back to Taymyria. He could be in danger.”
“As I asked earlier,” she said, purposely echoing his statement, “what is the CIA’s interest in him? You obviously didn’t travel all the way here to tell me you believe he’s disappeared and been forcibly returned to Siberia.”
MacNeil took up the tale. “During the time your father studied in England, some important research data was taken from a nuclear physics lab at Oxford, and he was suspect. It was never proven that he’d taken the information, nor was it ever found … but due to the sensitivity of the Cold War, and the fact that he was originally from Russia … well, the CIA has merely kept an eye on him and his whereabouts for the last several decades.”
“So, what, you think he has some thirty-year-old data he’s going to use—to do what?” They must think she was born yesterday. And where was the food?
That question, at least, was answered by a knock at the door. Marina hurried to answer it and welcomed in the room service waiter with such alacrity that he nearly forgot to have her sign the bill. She signed Bergstrom’s name and gave the man a 25% tip.
MacNeil pulled away from the window to join her as she began selecting her meal and piling it on her plate. Steak, pineapple, toast, fried potatoes with cheese, and a few tomato slices. She had to give him credit for good taste in food. “You going to eat all that?” he asked.
“Yes.” She slanted him a smile. “I’m starving.” Then she turned back to Bergstrom. “It would seem that you have more pressing matters than to keep such close tabs on a former Russian geologist. There are radical Islamic fundamentalists calling for a jihad against the US, along with nuclear weapons testing in Asia, and a whole lot of other threats to be investigated. So what’s really going on?” she asked.
“It’s possible—in fact, probable—that he has knowledge of confidential information; some of which is not outdated.” Bergstrom spoke simply and firmly. “We have recent data that indicates the Skaladeskas could be a potential threat to this country and others. And if indeed they have taken your father back, his knowledge could put our nation at risk. We need to locate him and bring him back.”
At last: the meat of the matter. “You want me to help you find him.” No effing way.
They nodded together: MacNeil, with his short, quick affirmation, and Bergstrom with a more vigorous, energetic bobbing. “Yes, Dr. Alexander—because other than your father, you appear to be the only other expert on the Skaladeskas here in the Western world—and perhaps anywhere outside of Taymyria. We want you to join our team—to find your father, and to find out everything we can about the Skaladeskas.”
“No.”
“You know of other experts who could assist us?” Bergstrom’s congenial smile told her he purposely misunderstood.
“I’m not going to help you find my father.” Marina was no longer hungry. They couldn’t be serious about trying to recruit her. Sydney Bristow she was not. “I’m not joining your team. That’s ridiculous. I’m not a spy. I’m a historian.”
“And a caver, a pilot, a rescue worker, and an expert on human subcultures. And you bear the mark of the Skaladeskas. You don’t need to be a spy, Dr. Alexander. But we need you.” Bergstrom remained calm, settled, soothing. Assuming he would have his way.
“I’ll tell you what I know about the Skalas—which isn’t all that much, thanks to Dad. And I’ll be available from Myanmar—by phone or email—if you want me to answer questions about my father, if you feel that will help. But I’m not getting any more involved than that, in any aspect of this so-called investigation.” She had to keep every bit of it at arms’ length —physically and emotionally. Anything related to her father.