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3. Marina Del Rey, California

35 Marina Del Rey, California GPS Coordinates: –118.4517449, 33.9802893 March 12, 2010 Ethan had spoken with Alan via satellite phone a few short hours after the team had discovered the hydrothermal vent community at the bottom of the lake. It was a weak signal, and the two men scarcely had time to congratulate one another before atmospheric interference had crippled the transmission. Forty-eight hours later, the solarflareshadsubsidedandtheywereabletospeakagain.ThistimeAlan’smindhad seemed to wander, and he was vague and unresponsive when Ethan questioned him about the vent and the team’s findings. When Ethan had expressed concern, Alan explained that he was just getting over a bad cold that had kicked the crap out of the entire team. Nothing to worry about, he’d said. We’re back on our feet and it’s business as usual. As evidence of their well being, he’d mentioned a geologic survey Leonelli and Schmidt were off somewhere conducting that very moment. Ethan couldn’t say why exactly—it was just a feeling—but even though he’d popped a couple of Xanax to take the edge off it had been nearly impossible for him to sleep that night. Maybe it was because he’d begun to believe in the existence of the organism his contact at the Department of Defense had strong-armed him to isolate. The golden goose of the DOD’s covert biological weapons research program was beginning to look like the real thing. True, there was no way of knowing with any degree of certainty that what Alan had dismissed as a case of the flu was not simply just that, but Ethan had a hunch. First, there was Alan’s shaky description of the stromatolite forest, the details of which he had communicated with an awe bordering on psychedelic rapture. Then there was the mystery illness. Although the symptoms Alan described were consistent with at least one stage of virtually every form of viral infection known to man, there was the troubling question of how. Antarctica was fraught with innumerable dangers—hypothermia, pulmonary edema , frostbite, snowblindness—but catching a cold wasn’t one of them. Viruses needed carriers to thrive, spread and propagate, and the bottom of the world was conspicu- 36 ~ Fade to Black ously devoid of such. Maybe his contact at the DOD wasn’t totally crazy after all. Who knows, there might even be a shred of truth to his apocalyptic soothsaying. Although infectious disease wasn’t his forte, Ethan knew how to run an expedition and was in too deep with the IRS to turn his back on Okum’s “offer.” Uncle Sam’s generosity was tempered with the knowledge that they had enough evidence to prosecute him on no less than ten felony counts involving tax-evasion, fraud and gross misuse of federal and state funds. The judicial system was cracking down on white-collar crime. This wasn’t about a slap on the wrist. If convicted, he could expect a lengthy stay in the federal country club. His cushy career in academia would be wrecked. So what if he had been living beyond his means, skimming a little extra off the top here and there, using grant money to make ends meet, billing the university for personal expenses—dinners at Campanile, the lease payments on his Mercedes . . . There wasn’t a full professor in the department who hadn’t at one time or another tweaked his code of ethics to supplement what could hardly be considered a living wage. The only difference between Ethan and the rest of them was that he had gotten caught. He would’ve been wise to keep a lower profile, steer clear of the spotlight like his less ambitious colleagues. But he enjoyed his modest celebrity so damn much that he probably would’ve done it the same way all over again if given the chance. At least he wasn’t a card-carrying drunk like so many of them. Nor did he comport himself with the social graces of a Tibetan yak. He was a functioning member of society , the department’s golden boy, and not some tired old recluse holed up in a dusty little cave of an office dying of cirrhosis and chronic dandruff. Sure, he was guilty of minor indiscretions every now and then, but not the sort of thing that hurt anyone. If there was one thing he could’ve done a better job with, it was managing his libido. Throughout...