The Pole of Inaccessibility

by Alan Bronston

  ***

  Chuck Stoddard walked briskly down the corridor of the building that housed the NSF Polar Sciences department in Washington DC. He was dressed in a tuxedo for a gala event that evening, celebrating the advancement in international cooperation that the sciences had helped to foster. There would be more diplomats than scientists at the event, most of whom considered science as merely the medium for the real important work, diplomacy. He felt like a prop, and was almost happy to have an excuse to bail.

  “This is definitely going to be a banner day in the annals of science advancing diplomacy,” he said to himself sarcastically as he negotiated his way through the halls, and he wasn’t talking about the dinner party. He had just gotten word that a SIT-REP, a situation report, from the ice had landed on his desk.

  The tuxedo seemed a completely inappropriate uniform for the task at hand, and his worried brow stretched the already taught skin of his forehead further, making the receding gray hairline appear that much more distant. A younger man who indulged himself in self-importance may have been allowed a fantasy about a James Bond reference, but for Chuck Stoddard there was not much to fantasize about except an early retirement.

  The Naval Attaché and the Undersecretary of State were already waiting for him in his office. The Secretary was dressed as he was; the naval officer smirked in amusement at their costume.

  “Have you read it yet?” Stoddard asked.

  “Yes,” the Undersecretary said, “but you go ahead. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Alright.”

  He read the report silently. It detailed how the rescue had been effected, the berthing of the Russians at the camp, the inexplicable attack by the Green Organization with whom the NSF had jousted for years, but never violently. Then he got to the part where Sokolov had been spirited off after asking for asylum.

  “Are you kidding me?” he wondered out loud.

  “Ah,” the Undersecretary said. “I see your getting to the good part. Continue.”

  Stoddard looked over his glasses at the two for some kind of sign. There wasn’t one, so he carried on, this time reading aloud.

  “We captured one of the terrorists who wishes for us to believe that they have taken the Russian to Terra Nova. We believe this to be misinformation to cover the others, and that they must have gone in the other direction, heading toward Chile. We have committed to the Russians that we would help to ‘rescue’ their kidnapped man. What are your instructions? Fredricks, he signs it.”

  “We cannot offer asylum in that environment,” the Attaché said. “Certainly not today, of all days.”

  “No,” the Undersecretary agreed. “But kidnapped? Why should they kidnap a Russian scientist?”

  Chuck Stoddard shook his head.

  “Not like them. They want publicity that embarrasses us. Why…” he wondered until he suddenly got it. “Oh.”

  “They think bringing attention to him will focus attention on the project,” the Undersecretary agreed.

  “Which it will,” the Attaché said. “But which is worse, bringing attention to something that is already out of the bag, or admitting to the Russians that one of their own has tried to defect?”

  It was clear to the others that this was a purely rhetorical question.

  “Let them keep him,” the Undersecretary said definitively. “He won’t be able to damage us any more that we already are. Let’s, however, make every appearance of cooperating with the Russians. Tell them they’ve gone to Terra Nova like the guys says. When we don’t catch him there, it’s no harm, no foul. We stay on good terms with our Soviet friends.”

  “I absolutely concur,” the Attaché said, smiling slyly.

  Chuck Stoddard shrugged his shoulders once and sighed.

  “I’ll message them back right now,” he said, happy to be done with it.

  “I’ll make sure they keep the bar open for you,” the Undersecretary said jovially. They all felt they had done a good nights work.