PROLOGUE
“Tell me, Renault,” said the older man. His eyes twinkled as he watched the coffee bubble in the cap of the percolator between them. “Why did you come here?”
Dr. Cicero was a kind man, jovial, the sort who liked to describe himself as “fifty-eight years young.” His beard had turned gray in his late thirties and white in his forties, and though usually neatly trimmed, it had grown wispy and unruly in his time on the tundra. He wore a bright orange parka, but it did little to mute the youthful light in his blue eyes.
The young Frenchman was slightly taken aback by the question, but he knew his answer immediately, having rehearsed it in his head many times. “The WHO contacted the university for research assistants. They, in turn, offered it to me,” he explained in English. Cicero
