Inungilak by Chana Cox

Author:Chana Cox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cia, 1980s, arctic, cold war, espionage spies
Publisher: Chana Cox

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Monday: July 14th

The Testing Facility staff sent Scott Whitman to officially welcome me to Foxe Five and to invite me to their Bastille Day Fête. When I asked why a Bastille Day Fête, Scott explained that at Foxe Five they celebrated damn near anything that came along. Scott asked if I thought Phyll might like to come.

For a moment I hesitated. “Why don't you ask Phyll? I think she may come if she's in town, but she might be at the dig working. Could you smuggle her onto the base, Scott?”

“No problem. No one is going to stop someone who looks like that. Besides isn't she the daughter of some high class politician or something?”

I nodded, “Does that help?”

He shrugged, “Damn right it does. Let's face it, Naomi, it helps to be connected.”

Later that afternoon I slipped into the only skirt I had brought north, and, with the help of a cane and a very nice marine escort I hobbled down to the Foxe Five Testing Facility. The DEW Line lab was nothing like the Lab on the hill. There were no test tubes or Bunsen burners – not even as part of a still. Bootleg liquor couldn't hope to compete with the quality and the price of liquor at the DEW Line. From what I could see the main room was filled with computers and computer type paraphernalia. There seemed to be dozens of little machines with styluses busily at work in total disregard of the human beings who milled about the room nursing their drinks, making conversation, and listening to Beethoven on one of those near perfect sound systems the government provided.

The party was already in full swing when I arrived although William Schmidt, the official host, had stepped out for a while. I scanned the crowd for a few moments. Beauregard Henderson's friends were conspicuous by their absence. This party was for civilized people. It was nothing like the party Welche and I had attended at the base. The air was less densely filled with smoke, there was only the hint of drugs, and the people handled their mixed drinks with something approaching casual unconcern.

The Testing Facility had sponsored the get together and invited all the whites from the settlement – all the southerners who existed as quasi mentors in the Arctic. There was a natural alliance between the “scientific staff” at the DEW Line and the nurses, teachers, and Nordair personnel from the settlement. All of them were isolated from the other military men at the base by virtue of their education and their pretensions to class; and they were isolated from the Inuit by virtue of their race and their culture. Such isolation bred its own fears among the whites. The people from the base were afraid of what they called cabin-fever. The whites in the settlement were afraid of “being bushed.” Both were diseases of isolation. A man with cabin fever will do anything to “get out” and a man who is bushed has already done everything and opted out.

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