by L. A. Larkin
‘Tell Mike,’ Adeyemi says to someone.
Her brain feels two sizes too big for her skull. She closes her eyes, hoping the room will stop rolling up and down like a boat in rough seas.
‘Can I have some water?’ She barely recognises her feeble voice.
He moves out of her line of vision and returns with a beaker. ‘Sit up.’ His tone is sharp. He won’t win a Mother Teresa Award. ‘You may feel dizzy. You’ve banged your forehead.’
Wolfe uses her arms to push up into a sitting position. The tent roof, the walls, the table, the door, the floor sway up and down. A moan escapes her lips. Adeyemi grabs her and holds her up.
‘Deep breaths,’ he says.
‘You a doctor?’ She slurs her words. Shit! What happened to me?
‘Nothing like it. I did the advanced medic course, that’s all.’
Wolfe gulps down some water and doesn’t even register Beer leading Heatherton into the Weatherhaven.
‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ Heatherton demands.
‘Sit forward,’ says Adeyemi. ‘Hang on to the table.’
No longer willing to prop her up, Adeyemi lets her go. She sways but manages to keep herself upright, crossing her legs for stability. Heatherton is clearly furious - his eyes have almost disappeared under a deep frown and his mouth is clenched into a slit - but Wolfe has no idea what he’s talking about. She looks for Beer’s cheery face but sees only fury.
‘I . . . I don’t know . . . what happened?’
Heatherton and Beer glance at each other.
‘Really? Well how about this? You’ve destroyed every last one of the samples we’ve worked night and day for.’
‘But I didn’t . . . What? All of them?’
‘Yes!’ Heatherton shouts, puce in the face. ‘Even the sodding lab samples.’
Wolfe frowns, bewildered, but frowning sends a shooting pain through her head. She shuts her eyes, trying to remember. The noise. That was it. She went outside to look.
‘Something woke me,’ Wolfe says. ‘I went out to see what it was.’
‘Sure you did,’ says Heatherton, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘What do you think I am? Stupid?’ He turns his back on her and rakes his fingers through his messy hair, clearly trying to control his rage.
‘Why, Olivia? Why?’ says Beer, his voice pleading.
‘But I didn’t. I saw someone going into the ice cave. It looked suspicious, so I hid between two containers and watched. Then I looked away for some reason, and I was shoved forward. Hit my head. I must’ve passed out.’
Heatherton turns abruptly. ‘So how come Toby found you lying in the cave with samples strewn around you? Explain that!’
‘What? I have no idea. No. That can’t be right. Unless I was dragged there.’
‘Then tell me who you saw.’
‘I didn’t get a good look.’
‘Perfect!’ Heatherton says, throwing his arms up.
Wolfe gingerly runs her hand over her brow and winces. There’s a small bump beneath a cut. Her face is really taking a pummelling.
‘Oh for God’s sake, Michael, I’ve got the bloody Eiffel Tower sticking out of my forehead! How did I manage to do that to myself?’
‘I don’t know, Olivia. What I do know is that everything we’ve worked for over the last ten years is gone. Every tedious, arse-licking meeting, begging for financial support; every team member, painstakingly selected; the years it’s taken to develop the drill; the nightmare logistics getting us here . . . all that, for nothing!’ Heatherton’s voice cracks.
‘It’s all right, mate,’ says Beer, placing a hand on his shoulder. But Heatherton shrugs it away, turning his back on everyone so he can wipe his wet eyes with his hands.
A flash of memory. A smell of chemicals. Wolfe looks down, trying to hang on to the image. ‘Somebody used chloroform. A cloth over my face. After they’d forced me to the ground. I remember now. I was between two containers.’ She looks up. ‘I most definitely was not inside the ice cave.’
‘I don’t know what to believe,’ Heatherton sighs.
‘Think about it, Michael. You invited me here. I didn’t kill Kevin, I didn’t sabotage your snowmobile or the boiler. So why on earth would I destroy the bacteria? Can’t you see? Somebody tried to kill me because I caught them in the act.’
Beer stares, open-mouthed. ‘What’s she talking about?’
Heatherton looks up, his eyes sunken. ‘I invited her here and Christ, I wish I hadn’t. I thought Kev’s death was suspicious, you see. Of all the people to have a fatal accident, it just happened to be the most critical member of the team. I don’t believe in coincidences, George. All the technical problems, they were deliberately engineered.’
‘What?’ Beer is wide-eyed with incredulity. ‘Who would do such a thing?’
‘I think someone here is working for Trankov.’
‘What?’ Beer blinks several times.
‘It’s all about being the first.’
‘My God, Mike! Why didn’t you tell me? We could have taken turns at guarding the cylinders. Why didn’t you confide in me?’
‘And what about me, boss? You think I’m a traitor?’ Adeyemi asks, his presence forgotten.
Heatherton slumps back against the kitchen workbench and looks defeated. He shakes his head.
‘No, Bruce, I don’t think you are and I’d appreciate you keeping this to yourself.’
‘This is very bad,’ says Adeyemi. ‘This kinda thing can tear the team apart.’
‘Mike, answer my question,’ Beer snaps. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you thought the security of this project was compromised? Why? I, of all people, had to know. I’m logistics, remember?’
‘Because, George, you already thought me obsessed about beating Trankov, and if I’d told you I thought the Russians had a spy here, you’d have thought I’d finally lost the plot.’
Beer is speechless for a long moment. ‘So who is it?’
Heatherton looks up. ‘Not you, mate.’
‘Then who?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘You’re joking? Because Vitaly is Russian? Or was. That man has worked his arse off for this project. He’s dedicated to it. No wonder you’ve been treating him like crap since Kev’s death.’ Beer shakes his head. ‘Everyone takes their lead from you, Mike. They’ve picked up on your animosity towards him. Which is bad for teamwork, bad for morale.’
Heatherton stares at the floor.
Beer focuses back on Wolfe. ‘Can you recall anything about the person you saw?’
A fuzzy memory of Yushkov outside somebody’s tent. When was that? It was very quiet. People were sleeping. She remembers the cold metal of the container at her back. Yushkov was trying to get inside a tent. Not his own. That’s it! Harvey’s tent! Wolfe is about to tell them, when Yushkov pokes his head in.
‘I not want to interrupt, but this is urgent,’ Yushkov says.
‘What now?’ Heatherton sighs.
Yushkov steps inside and glances at her. His look is threatening. ‘I no want to talk about this with her.’
Heatherton rubs his brow. ‘Vitaly, whether we like it or not, there are no secrets here. Tell me what’s so important.’
Yushkov gives Wolfe a warning look.
‘The drill and sediment probe, they are damaged.’
‘Damaged! How?’
‘We drill into ice as hard as concrete,’ says Yushkov.
‘Hold on. Before we go any further, I want Stacy, Gary and Trent with us at the bore hole,’ says Heatherton, heading for the door.
They leave. There is no way Wolfe is going to miss out on this conversation. She stands and stumbles through the Weatherhaven, clinging to handholds like a drunken sailor. Her jacket lies on her sleeping bag. She puts it on. The exertion makes her nauseous again. She waits for the feeling to pass, then heads for the bore hole site, planting each step carefully. The horizon moves, she stops, then starts again. Frustrated, she takes some deep breaths a
nd locks her eyes on to the crane.
By the time she gets to it, Heatherton, Beer and Yushkov have been joined by Price, Rundle and Matthews. The steel and titanium probe, as tall as a man and shaped like a pencil, has had its protective plastic covering removed so it can be inspected. It is suspended above the bore hole by a mechanical winch.
‘So what’s the problem?’ asks Heatherton.
Yushkov holds up two fingers. ‘Two problems.’ He points to the very tip of the probe. ‘Number one, the sediment corer. It is corroded very bad. I do not think we can bring the sediment back to surface using this.’
Price grabs the middle of her thick bunch of hair and flicks it out behind her, then kneels down to take a closer look. She wears latex gloves and runs her fingers over the steel tip.
Rundle, also wearing sterile gloves, takes a look. ‘It’s taken quite a battering.’
‘Okay,’ Heatherton asks Rundle. ‘But can it collect samples?’
Rundle shakes his head. ‘I don’t think so. Look here. The tip is partially closed, as if the sides have been squeezed together. You’re not going to get much through that.’
‘I agree,’ says Price. She looks at Rundle. ‘Do we have a replacement?’
‘Not here or at Rothera. It’ll have to be flown from England.’
‘Shit!’ says Heatherton.
‘If Grantham Engineering gets it on a plane today - and that’s really pushing it - then the best-case scenario is four days. That’s based on good weather,’ says Beer.
‘In eighteen hours there will be no hole,’ says Yushkov.
‘Which means we’ll have to start all over again,’ says Beer.
‘What about the water sample probe? Will that work?’
‘Hold on, Michael,’ says Price, shooting up from her squatting position. ‘This project is about both sediment and water, not one or the other.’
Heatherton raises his hand to pacify her. ‘I’m simply asking the question. Trent?’
Rundle scratches his head. ‘The water probe includes three rosettes of eight bespoke hundred-millilitre titanium water sample bottles. I’ve inspected them, and they all seem fine. The mechanism to open the bottles once they’re immersed is also working perfectly.’
‘Sensors? Camera? Sonar? They all okay?’
‘That’s Bruce’s baby,’ Trent replies, glancing in the direction of the control room. ‘He’s testing all that right now.’
Heatherton and Matthews both nod. Price frowns, her freckled neck flushed with anxiety.
‘I don’t like where this is heading,’ she says. ‘If we don’t take sediment samples, we could miss out on the most critical evidence of microbial life in the lake. We can’t just rely on water samples.’
‘I take your point,’ says Heatherton. ‘But something is better than nothing.’
‘I disagree,’ Matthews chips in. ‘We should wait and retrieve both.’
‘Can the drill cope with making a second bore hole?’ Beer asks Yushkov.
‘This is problem number two. I show you,’ says Yushkov. He pulls away the drill nozzle’s plastic covering to reveal the circular brass and steel head, with jet holes around the circumference and at the tip.
Yushkov points. ‘Look at the screws. They hold the nozzle together. They are rusting. See. This is big surprise to me.’ He pauses as Heatherton and Rundle peer closely at the screws. ‘And two of the jet holes have got bigger. This mean the bore hole on that side of the head will get more hot water than the other.’
‘He’s right,’ says Matthews. ‘It’ll force the drill to swing from side to side. Instead of focusing the impact on boring down, we’ll get an ever-widening hole.’
‘It needs replacing?’ Heatherton asks, but it’s clear he already knows the answer.
‘Da,’ says Yushkov.
‘Fucking hell!’ says Heatherton. ‘Replacements will take four days to get here. Will the boiler even last that long?’
‘It should do,’ Beer replies.
‘And fuel? Do we have enough left?’
‘Again, we should have,’ says Beer. ‘But I need to check.’
All eyes are on Heatherton.
‘Make the calls. You’ve got four days to get everything here, then we drill again.’
‘And if it doesn’t get here in time?’ asks Beer.
‘We go home empty-handed.’
16
As Heatherton, Yushkov, Beer and Rundle finalise logistics with Grantham Electronics for the replacement parts, Wolfe sits on the edge of one of the waterbed-sized fuel bladders at the far end of the camp, keen to avoid the glares she’s been getting from the team. Even the morning sun looks like an angry eye hovering above the horizon.
Through their Skype link, Cohen scrutinises the cut just above Wolfe’s right eyebrow. ‘I send you to fucking Antarctica on a cosy little research trip. And look at the state of you! Sheesh.’
‘Keep it down, will you? My head’s ready to explode.’
‘Adds some balance at least,’ he says, his bony finger wavering between the cut on the right and her black eye on the left.
The painkillers are finally kicking in and as long as she keeps her head still, she can just about think.
‘Turns out Heatherton was right,’ Wolfe says, keeping her voice low. The wind has died away and sound travels easily across the ice. She’s wearing earphones so nobody else can hear Cohen’s booming voice. Wolfe gives him a rapid summary. ‘Someone here wants this project to fail, and I now think Knox was probably murdered. What I don’t understand is why they didn’t finish me off.’
‘Maybe they will.’
‘That’s comforting. Thanks, Moz.’
‘I’m just saying,’ Cohen shrugs. ‘You want to come home?’
‘No way. It’s just getting interesting.’
Cohen leans back in his chair, hands behind his head, nodding his approval. ‘Well, if an RPG-7 can’t shift you, not sure what can.’
Wolfe remembers the convoy of Isil militants entering Mosul, Iraq, in June 2014. Hidden from view, she’d watched, horrified, as a rebel prepared to fire an anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher at the abandoned shell of a house where she and Annabel Maine, CNN journalist, and her cameraman, Joe Rossi, were hiding.
‘Heard anything from Annabel?’ Wolfe asks.
‘She’s a vegetable.’
‘Jesus! You can be a bastard. Have you forgotten she used to work for you?’
‘She defected to the Yanks. So why should I give a fuck?’
Wolfe shakes her head. ‘You always gave her such a hard time.’
Cohen juts his head forward, as if about to head-butt the monitor. ‘She had no fucking talent! Worse, she thought everything she wrote was gold. Expected accolades for mediocrity.’
‘She wasn’t that bad.’
‘Yes, she was, even when you helped her. She only got the CNN gig because she was blonde and pretty.’
‘She was a friend, Moz.’
Cohen views her in silence. ‘I went to see her once. In hospital, a few weeks after she’d been airlifted to London. See! I can be nice.’
‘Last I heard, she was recovering well. Working from home.’
‘Bully for her.’
Wolfe remembers the exact moment the grenade exploded and Annabel flew into the air. ‘I was lucky. Just a damaged knee.’
‘Bullshit! You kept your wits about you. She ignored the danger.’
‘Let’s move on, shall we?’
‘No, you’ve missed my point. You’re still working for me after all these years because of your instinct for a good story, your sheer bloody-mindedness, and, most importantly, your courage. What you did for Annabel . . . it was nothing short of heroic. Me? I’d have fucking run like the wind.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘Oh yes I fucking would! And don’t tell me what I would or wouldn’t do. You sound like my bloody wife!’
‘In that case, when I get back, you can take me to dinner to celebrate our eight-y
ear work anniversary,’ Wolfe teases.
‘Hey! I never take my wife out, so why the fuck would I take out one of my godforsaken reporters?’
He’s trying to cheer her up, and it’s working. Moz has more heart than he likes people to realise.
‘Could you talk to Michael? He’s convinced I destroyed the samples.’
‘Someone’s done a good job of making it look that way. I’ll send an email. Remind him why you’re there.’
Wolfe’s laptop pings. She divides her screen so she can still see Cohen’s ugly mug, and also view her Inbox. The subject is ‘Your traitor’.
‘You just sent me something?’
‘No, but I’m waiting for you to send me something along the lines of “Sabotage - alien life destroyed”.’
‘Christ, Moz! You should be on a tabloid. I was thinking more like, “A Race to the Death”, focusing on the rivalry between the two teams and posing the question of a traitor sabotaging the British project.’
Cohen chuckles to himself.
‘Ah,’ she says, ‘you’re winding me up. I should’ve known.’
Wolfe has opened the email. It is unsigned, and brief.
It is not difficult to guess your traitor. He has betrayed his birth country and now betrays yours.
‘Shit! It’s from your email address.’
‘What are you banging on about?’ says Cohen, leaning in.
She hesitates for a moment before opening the pdf, wary that the attachment might be infected. Written in Russian Cyrillic, the document is only one page of nine. There is a photo of four men in the mottled khaki uniform of the Russian Army. The photo is a little grainy but, as she peers at each man in turn, she sucks in a sharp breath as she recognises a younger and slighter Yushkov.
Cohen has lost patience. ‘What the fuck are you looking at? Send it to me!’
‘Okay, okay, keep your shirt on.’
Wolfe forwards it to Cohen.
‘Yushkov can’t be more than twenty,’ she says.
His hair is shaved so short, he looks bald. His wide smile of white teeth and piercing blue eyes are unmistakable. He has his arm draped over a comrade: shorter, darker, and laughing.
‘Bollocks! It’s in Russian,’ comments Cohen. ‘I’ll get a translator on to it.’
