Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘No,’ said Stoddart. ‘Still inside.’

  From Gregori Lyalin, still at the point of the bluff, there was a shout.

  It was Paul Spencer’s suggestion that Henry Partington helicopter to Andrews Air Force base personally to welcome back the first of the returning scientists from the US Antarctic stations at McMurdo and Scott-Amundsen and Spencer again who evolved what came close to being a disastrous idea how to turn the media event into one of international statesmanship because he hadn’t calculated Partington would have to speak individually to eleven global leaders from the VIP lounge. They were lucky the military C-130 encountered delaying head winds. Partington was actually finishing his last conversation with Tokyo when the plane touched down and only had five minutes to scan what Spencer and Carson Boddington had hurriedly briefed the speechwriter to create.

  Partington insisted upon shaking hands with the first twenty to get off the plane before leading Hank Brownlow, the McMurdo director, to stand beside him on the podium. He called the group that Brownlow led ‘brave men and women’ and thanked God that none of them had contracted what he referred to as ‘a scourge sweeping the globe’. America had taken the lead alerting the world to the pandemic and that’s how he intended the country he was proud to lead to remain. He had personally ordered the evacuation of all American facilities in the Antarctic and only thirty minutes earlier had concluded, with the Japanese premier, conversations with heads of the eleven countries with research and scientific stations in the Antarctic.

  ‘My message – and plea – was that until we find a cause and a cure for this dreadful illness, that they withdraw their people to safety as I have today begun to withdraw Americans.’ With an excuse to consult his printed list – and at the same time remind himself of the target points to flag – Partington pedantically recited the titles and the nationalities of the stations. ‘The Russian president, with whom I have been closely working since we first learned of the disease, agreed at once to pull out from their five stations. So has the United Kingdom from its Halley base. And Japan from Mizuho and Showa. Argentina already has transport en route to airlift its personnel from their General Belgrano station. New Zealand, Australia and South Africa are convening cabinet meetings. India, France and Germany have promised a decision by tonight.’

  No contact had yet been possible with those (‘true heroes’) in Siberia but he had authorized officials at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where all the medical research had so far been attempted, to release to the WHO and all other involved scientific groups, the known symptoms and indications of the Shangri-La Strain.

  ‘No one – certainly not me, personally – is going to rest until this terrible scourge has been defeated,’ concluded Partington, stentoriously.

  On the return flight to the White House, Partington said: ‘What’s my next shot?’

  You’re back in favour, translated Spencer. ‘How about you photographed on the telephone, talking to Amanda and Stoddart in Siberia?’

  ‘I like that a lot. Make it work.’

  Which was very much the thought at that moment in the mind of Lord Ranleigh. The stories were already beginning to run that Simon Buxton had lost the confidence of the parliamentary party. The drama of a telephone interview with Reynell would be the ideal launch pad for his name to be leaked as the most likely successor.

  For several minutes Raisa was unable to talk, the helmet link to the collar of her suit ripped where she’d torn it away, as she slumped uncontrollably shaking on the ground where she’d been stumblingly helped by Lyalin. When she did speak she did so accusingly, directly to Guy Dupuy.

  ‘He came back, looking for you!’

  ‘I lost you. Didn’t know which direction you’d taken,’ protested the Frenchman.

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Lyalin.

  ‘We set off together,’ said Dupuy. ‘I was the last … got separated. I didn’t see which way they’d gone ahead of me, where the shaft divided. I carried on, looking for them. Realizing I’d lost them, I went on for a while, saw some of the bodies and an animal, like a dog. Then the passageway just ended. I came back, calling for them. Couldn’t find them so I made my way out …’ It sounded like the defensive plea it was.

  ‘I heard Vadim fall,’ broke in Raisa. ‘His scream. He’d gone back about five minutes before, when he realized Dupuy wasn’t up with us. I went back, after the scream. There was a side passage he must have taken, that we’d passed. It opened out into a cavern with a lot of boreholes. I went to each one, calling. There wasn’t a reply. I couldn’t hear him breathing even.’

  ‘We’ve got to go back!’ declared Stoddart.

  ‘We don’t have the equipment!’ said Bobin. ‘Nothing that we need. Certainly nothing to get him out of a crevasse.’

  ‘He might have recovered consciousness,’ argued Stoddart. ‘We could drop fresh oxygen bottles. Take the risk even of his taking his helmet off, so he could survive until we can get proper help. Could you take us back to the place where you think he fell?’

  Raisa nodded, still looking at Dupuy. ‘Where the shaft divided, which way did you go, to the left or to the right!’

  Dupuy hesitated. ‘The left, I think.’

  ‘You think!

  ‘If he’s still alive he’s got five minutes left on his reserve,’ cut off Stoddart. ‘We need to move, right now!’

  ‘Someone has to go back to where the drivers are. Get ropes and more people to help, from the institute,’ said Bobin.

  ‘You,’ ordered Lyalin. ‘Your authority.’

  The other entomologist said something. Lyudmilla said: ‘Vadim Ivanovich … that’s his name, Vadim Ivanovich Karelin … is married. They’re having their second child in two months. He wanted a boy.’

  Her attention unwavering, Raisa said to the Frenchman: ‘You’re coming back, too. To look for the man who went back for you.’

  ‘We’re wasting time!’ insisted Stoddart.

  Lyalin said: ‘We’ll all go.’

  Only when she tried to do just that – to move – did Geraldine recognize how total her exhaustion was. Raisa had to be helped to her feet and into her spare, untorn suit. Stoddart insisted on minutely examining all the protection of those who had already been into the colony before replacing everyone’s oxygen pack and cupping two spare packs beneath his free arm. He led the trudge back up the incline towards the bluff and as he turned it, toward the cliff face, he exclaimed: ‘Fuck me!’

  Peter Reynell and Amanda O’Connell were on the exposed facade terrace, appearing to look and examine for the benefit of the forgotten photographers. Stoddart said: ‘We’ve got someone lost in there – most likely down a borehole – so get the fuck off your stage so we can go in to look for him … get him out …’

  The suited, posed figure briefly stiffened. Reynell said: ‘If it’s a search party I want to be part of it.’

  Amanda said: ‘So do I.’

  Stumping up beside the shifting scree Stoddart, outraged, shouted: ‘I’m talking rescue, not photo opportunity! Get the fuck out of the way!’

  ‘You haven’t been inside, any more than I have,’ said Reynell, evenly, controlled. ‘So you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You got someone lost in there – in difficulty – you’re possibly going to need all the brute manpower you’ve got. And at the moment we’re it!’

  Stoddart was at the broken cliff face, the ledge upon which they had to climb just above head height with Reynell and Amanda far to his right and the two local media men stuttering their camera exposures just behind him. He said: ‘You’re right. I’m wrong. You could make all the difference. Let’s hope to Christ you do.’

  When they’d all clambered up, Geraldine said: ‘It’s an ice tomb. Nowhere you’re going to step is safe. There’s boreholes and crevasses everywhere. Slide your feet: don’t try to take steps. If you do that and slip when you put your foot down, you could go into a hole none of us saw …’ She paused, unsure whether to continue. ‘If you do see filth – shit
– on the ground, step over it. We’re going to need it, forensically, uncontaminated by whatever we might have trodden in from outside. You’re possibly going to see some unusual-looking people, most of them dead from what I think we’re investigating. Don’t touch them: don’t touch anything. And don’t get separated; hold on to the person in front. Under the mountain, the voice link goes …’

  Unasked, Lyudmilla provided the Russian translation.

  Raisa, insisting that Dupuy be the next in line behind her, set off along a passage that broke away from a larger opening almost directly inside the open facade walkway. Everyone did hold on to the person in front of them and scuffed flat footed along the ice-greased floor, necessarily in step because of their front-to-back closeness, like a crocodile of cross-country skiers. They came upon two recesses, one with two geriatric adults, the other with a similarly aged couple and their daughter surrounded by the paraphernalia of their lives, and there was a variety of grunts and breath intakes. Only when there was a near blinding flash from behind did Geraldine realize the two photographers had tagged themselves on to the end.

  ‘We’re going into the borehole cavern,’ announced Raisa, first in Russian, then in English. The transmission broke up and she repeated it several times to ensure everyone heard and remained just inside the entrance to fan everyone out around the absolute edge of a floor pockmarked by sinks.

  There was a murmur of horror, at the thought of what could have happened to the lost entomologist, and curtly Lyalin said, in both languages: ‘Be quiet! Only I will speak. Our only chance of locating him is by the voice link. Help me, with light …’

  The Russian stepped delicately out on to the holed surface, the centre of everyone else’s spotlight. Despite Lyalin’s injunction Geraldine said: ‘Test where the separation is narrow, between the holes! A rock bridge could collapse.’

  The Russian grunted in acknowledgement but noticeably altered his step, adopting something close to a tip-toeing gait. At each hole he stooped, trying to peer down by the light of his own flashlight, repeatedly calling the name of Vadim Ivanovich. From the far side of the cavern, Lyalin told them all to take a deep breath and hold it and for them all to listen for the faintest sound of unconscious breathing. They heard nothing.

  ‘Maybe a photographic flash would go deeper,’ urged Bobin, in sad desperation.

  At the very obvious hesitation, Stoddart said: ‘I know how to fire a flashgun,’ and took equipment off the unprotesting local cameraman. He edged out as cautiously as the Russian institute director, sure as he did so that it was Geraldine’s whimper when he dislodged some unseen rock into a hole. It felt as if everything was in constant, shifting movement beneath his feet. He exploded the flash-gun into eight holes, seeing nothing but impenetrable darkness, before the battery began to give out. Stoddart didn’t see the rock large enough momentarily to bruise his foot that he unintentionally kicked into a hole slowly making his way back and this time Geraldine cried out.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said.

  From where he stood, still on the far side of the cavern and addressing Raisa by name, Lyalin said: ‘You sure this is the only way he could have come?’

  There was a moment’s silence, broken by Lyalin’s sonorous Russian which Geraldine guessed at once to be a prayer. She was surprised to hear Raisa’s intermittent voice among the responses dominated by the other entomologist.

  Raisa made a point of insisting that Dupuy lead the line outside and it wasn’t until Stoddart was again helping everyone from the ledge, instinctively counting, that he realized she wasn’t with them and called for a halt, grateful for Reynell’s help at once to climb yet again back on to the ledge. He was at the mouth of the tunnel before he detected the light of her approaching flashlight.

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Checking that the tunnel Dupuy says he took was a dead end.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘Yes. But I know the frightened bastard backed off. Vadim Ivanovich died going back to look for him.’

  Vladimir Bobin was waiting around the cliff outcrop, with at least ten men brought up with ropes and ladders from the institute.

  ‘I need to be shown where the cavern is,’ insisted the bearded man.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ offered Stoddart.

  Bobin said: ‘Irkutsk – the institute – is in uproar. Calls from everyone, from everywhere. The illness has become public. And what’s been discovered here—’ He looked around the group. ‘You’ve all got to call your governments … whoever … right away …’

  ‘Great timing,’ said Geraldine, curious at the openness with which Reynell laughed at the remark.

  Twenty-Eight

  Without genetically counting – too physically and mentally drained to count, let alone think genetically – Geraldine ached throughout every DNA molecule, strand, thread and fibre of her being into one agonized, heartbeat-throbbing amalgam of near total exhaustion. It was genuinely a physical, hurting pain and there were abrupt awakenings from eye-open gaps of mental blankness, one moment knowing where she was and what she was saying, seconds later, seconds that seemed like hours, finding herself in a sentence she couldn’t remember beginning.

  A separate ache was to sleep properly, but she wasn’t allowed to. Peter Reynell came close to invoking his official, superior authority by insisting she travel back to Irkutsk with him and Amanda O’Connell. He made her go step by prodding, questioning step through her exploration of the Neolithic cave complex and recount everything that she and Lyudmilla Vlasov had seen and what (‘not just your own impression – your remit – but what everyone else felt as well’) they’d concluded before the failed rescue attempt, which she’d left Stoddart desperately guiding the Listvyanka party back to resume.

  They were twelve kilometres from Irkutsk – although Geraldine had no awareness of where she was – before they finally allowed her to slump into the rear seat corner and Geraldine had almost an hour to sleep. She had to be roughly shaken awake when they reached the Grand Hotel. She was conscious of slips of paper being thrust into her hand from her key slot – and of Reynell taking them from her, saying he’d handle the messages – but not of actually getting into her room. She left it momentarily to slide a shaking note beneath Stoddart’s door, saying she was leaving hers unlocked, and remembered to respray the mosquito net with insecticide before getting beneath it, taking off only her boots and ski-jacket.

  Geraldine fought against being awakened, actually trying to push Stoddart’s shoulder-shaking hand away, for a long time refusing to respond, wanting only to be left and when she finally regained some awareness she still tried to resist. It was Stoddart’s gently persistent voice that eventually roused her and when it did she came together at once, anxiously.

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘No,’ said Stoddart. ‘They brought harnesses from the institute to lower men down the holes. There wasn’t rope long enough to reach the bottom of any of them. None of the men on the lines could see the bottom either, with their lights.’

  Geraldine swung out from under the netting. ‘What else?’

  ‘An enormous number of media are trying to get here, apparently. Lyalin’s asked Moscow to refuse permission. He’s flying army specialists and equipment in overnight: engineers to chart and map the complex, generators to provide the lighting we’ll need and an official film crew and stills cameramen. The Russians have got body bags developed for radiation victims that we’re going to use to prevent any disease transmission. There’s also going to be soldiers to seal the mountain off.’

  ‘What about Washington? London?’

  ‘Our intrepid politicians have given telephone interviews to let the world know how brave they’ve been, leading an ongoing rescue attempt. I was five minutes into a conversation with Partington before I realized he was being filmed talking to me.’

  ‘Those people in the caves died from our illness,’ stated Geraldine.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I don’t want to work
here. It was ridiculous of me to imagine I could. I want to collect everything I think could be relevant and take it all back to Detrick with some of the bodies, some that have obviously died from ageing and the youngsters who didn’t. That’s what could show us the way, discovering why some were resistant and others weren’t.’ Geraldine smiled, wanly. ‘I don’t want to sleep by myself tonight. Not for anything else but to sleep. I just don’t want to be alone.’

  Stoddart smiled back, just as bleakly. ‘At this moment all I’m capable of is sleeping.’

  ‘Couldn’t have gone better!’ insisted Partington. To show his satisfaction he’d had drinks – Scotch and bourbon and a pitcher of martini, which was his drink – set up in the small, private room off the Oval Office, and partying, glasses in hand, they’d watched the specially extended main evening news on all three major channels. Partington had, in combined total, filled an unprecedented one hour and ten minutes of television screen time – with constant CNN repeats – and Boddington had stopped at two hundred trying to keep count of the number of radio stations across the country running extended air time segments. He sipped his drink.

  ‘Pity Stoddart tried to dominate your reference to global warming,’ said Richard Morgan.

  ‘Our legal people have had some approaches from lawyers representing the relatives of those who died in Antarctica … wanting more details of the compensation and pension package I announced on television …’

  Million-plus litigation, read Morgan and Spencer together. Morgan examined the contents of his glass, leaving Spencer to wade through the morass alone.

  ‘And personal effects?’ anticipated Spencer, lapsing easily into double-speak.

  ‘That too, I’m sure,’ said the president. Exactly what I’m talking about.

  ‘I’ve got it all together.’