Beneath the Ice

by Patrick Woodhead

  Rain. Yes, he could still remember rain.

  Stang peered closer, trying to discern the colour of the eyes beyond the shadow of the forehead. It was impossible to tell. The image was too small, the subtle tilt of the head too low. Why had he tilted his head down like that? Why would he have done such a stupid thing?

  He could see his hand begin to shake with the effort of trying to remember. Exhaling a ragged breath, he tried to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth, forcing the air through tight lips. That’s what he had been trained to do at the Academy. All the pilots used it to combat the effects of negative G, when arcing through the sky in fighter jets. He could remember the briefing notes, even picture the diagrams that had been drawn on the white board in anatomy class. And now, he seemed to feel that exact same pressure, the weight pushing down on his chest. He had to take things slowly, step by step, not rush into something as important as remembering what colour his eyes had been.

  It had been a Tuesday when the photograph had been taken. Tuesday. The word seemed to trigger something deep within his mind. Swinging round, he paced back to the main living area of the room and crouched down next to a low plastic table. Perched on one side was a large digital clock he had built, but instead of the numbers increasing they counted down in sequence. Five hundred and seventy-six hours to go. He did the calculations swiftly in his head, computing the numbers by rote.

  Five hundred and seventy-six. That meant today was Tuesday 16 February.

  The corners of Stang’s lips pulled upwards hesitantly as though he were practising a new type of smile. His tongue then ran across his lips in anticipation.

  A padlocked metal chest lay on the far side of the table and Stang reached across for it. He then stopped himself. Today was the day, but was there enough left? The last time he had been so foolhardy, so utterly carefree, he had almost used it all up.

  Taking the key from a leather string around his neck, Stang clicked open the lock. His fingers groped within the deep chest, brushing past his hunting rifle and the boxes of ammunition, until finally they felt the glossy cover of a magazine. Pulling it triumphantly on to his lap, he stroked his hand across it before finally flipping it open. As soon as the sheaves of paper parted, the faintest hint of perfume wafted towards him from the open sachet within. Immediately, his nostrils flared as he drank in every part of the wondrous scent.

  There was sandalwood and ochre, both infused by some kind of exotic Arabic spice whose top notes played across the whole magnificent symphony. Raising the magazine higher, he gently squeezed the sachet stuck to the page, oozing out a single drop of the precious liquid. It bled on to the glossy paper, slowly fanning out and releasing a deep, resounding aroma. Stang let his eyes close, giving everything to his olfactory senses and letting the perfume fill every part of his brain.

  He dropped back on to his haunches, almost unable to process the sheer opulence of it all. His nostrils flared one last time, drawing in every hint of the scent into his lungs, before he forced himself to slam shut the magazine. In that one moment he tried to hold on to the absolute bliss, to keep the intensity of the fragrance alive, but already he could feel it wilting, slipping from his grasp like the end of a perfect sunset. Then it was gone; swallowed by the dead air all around him.

  Stang sniffed deeply, then deeper again. There was nothing.

  In all the years of research and planning that had gone into this mission, nobody had ever told him that Antarctica had no smell. It was an extraordinary truth, and one that, in its own way, was almost as debilitating as his loss of sight. Not as immediate or panicked, but far more insidious.

  Ten months had passed, with the long dark of winter compounding Stang’s misery. Now he hankered for smell almost as much as he had done for water. The food was no help. Every dehydrated pack was the same; a simple bureaucratic oversight, but one that had left him with hundreds upon hundreds of mashed potato sachets flavoured by some kind of ubiquitous, all-pleasing spice. He had eaten so many that he could no longer taste or smell them, his mind having long since blanked out the flavours.

  In the mornings he would sometimes bury his nose in his armpit, sniffing for the slightest trace of stale sweat or body odour. Just something to prove that he was still there. But after so many months, even his own odour had gone, as if Antarctica’s dead air had finally succeeded in scrubbing him away.

  After placing the copy of Vogue back in the metal chest and carefully padlocking it, Stang pulled himself to his feet. He stared at the digital clock, a snarl instinctively forming on his lips. Time was ticking away and Pearl would be here soon.

  Richard Pearl. He forced himself not to think about the man any further. He had already lost days, maybe even weeks, to that. Finally, after so very long, time was running out.

  And he still had so much to do.

  Chapter 4

  LUCA STOOD BY the snub nose of the Russian-made Ilyushin-76 aircraft. The bloated wings arced down from the top of the fuselage, giving the plane a squat, bulldog attitude. Across the trailing edge of the wings, Jet-A1 fuel leaked out through the rivets, instantly vaporising in the African sun.

  Squinting against the glare, Luca walked around the front of the plane. He shook his head, never before having seen a relic of the Cold War so close up. He could see his reflection in the tinted glass of the navigator’s hatch. The glass made it appear as if the fuselage had great, gaping jaws perpetually trying to swallow the air in front of it. The plane looked incongruous against the business jets lining the apron at Cape Town International, but then again, so was its destination.

  ‘Go! Go!’ shouted one of the Russian loaders. It was the single English word in his vocabulary, but all that he had ever needed when dealing with the melee of scientists and construction workers who usually boarded these flights. He eyed Luca cautiously, wondering why someone would be going into Antarctica so late in the season. The weather was already changing, the wind and dark of winter only a week or so away. Everyone was focused on getting home before the continent shut down, with even the pilots performing their safety checks with uncharacteristic haste.

  The loader paused, wincing as the sound of the massive jet engines rose in pitch. He signalled impatiently for Luca to clamber up the metal steps, bundling his kit bag after him with a well-practised disregard for its contents. At the top of the steps Luca paused, staring back at the bustling airport. It was so alive – there was colour and sound everywhere he looked. Even the air was heavy. The sea was only a few miles away and he could almost taste the salt in the air. Luca took it all in, knowing only too well that this world was the diametric opposite of the one he was about to enter.

  Inside, the plane was a mess of loose wires and tubing. Cyrillic lettering was stencilled over every clean surface, while cargo netting held down hundreds of barrels of fuel that stretched deep into the belly of the plane. As Luca pulled down one of the seat flaps, the loader grabbed on to his shoulder. The noise of the engines made it impossible for him to speak so instead he mimed smoking a cigarette and then shaking his head, pointed to the barrels of fuel.

  ‘Yeah, I got it,’ Luca mouthed, nodding his head.

  The engines’ roar intensified, each increment of power sending vibrations through the back of Luca’s seat. The pilots were holding the plane with the brakes, wringing out every possible advantage for take-off. With a lurch, they surged forward along the runway, rolling and rolling, but barely seeming to go any faster. Just as it seemed they would plough off the end of Cape Town’s three-kilometre runway, the nose pitched up and the last of the engines’ power dragged the plane into the sky.

  Once airborne, Luca pulled out the files Bates had given him on each of the British scientists he was to guide across to the drill site. There were three of them, ranging from mid-thirties to early-fifties, and none of them had a shred of climbing experience. The tractors would only be able to get them so far, then they would have to navigate the mountain range to get to the lake itself. Luca shut h
is eyes, already feeling a twinge in his lower back. That was always the thing about bloody scientists – they never travelled light.

  Reaching for his kit bag, he pulled on his fleece layers and smeared a thick wadge of suntan cream over the bridge of his nose and cheeks. Sewn into the inside lining of his fleece jacket, he could just make out the memory stick with its spyware software that Bates had given him. Letting his thumb rub over its edges, he thought back to the helicopter ride from the oil rig.

  Bates had briefed him on the route he should take to get the scientists to the drill site and had been insistent they travel west over the mountain ridge, even plotting a GPS route for him to take. But the wide-frame satellite imagery had been too hazy to see the relief in detail and, now that he had hours to kill on the plane, he wondered how Bates had been so sure of the route. And why was he insistent that they should travel west? Surely it would be better for Luca to check the lie of the land for himself once he had actually landed in Antarctica.

  But that’s the way it was with Bates. Luca could never tell whether he was holding something back or whether it was just his nature. Half-truths were his stock in trade after all. Perhaps even Bates could barely tell the difference any more.

  Then again, what did it matter? Luca would load up the software on the main computer and get the scientists to the drill site. That was it. Anything more than that was none of his business.

  He shut his eyes, letting the background hum of the plane wash over him. The noise and vibration were strangely soporific, while the heady fumes from the fuel barrels only intensified as the hours passed. He tried to keep himself awake, forcing his eyes open again and again, but already he knew it was hopeless. In that single moment, just as the blackness fanned out across his vision like a sunspot, he knew that he would think of Bear.

  The image of her was never clear. It was more of an impression – the sensation of her next to him. He could feel her breath on his skin as she nuzzled into the crook of his neck, smell the faint scent of her long black hair. These moments were always so visceral, with Bear feeling so much a part of him that, for the first few seconds after waking up, he couldn’t tell whether he had been imagining it or not.

  All he had done was leave her a message. A single voicemail informing her that he was off to Antarctica and that Kieran Bates was her point of contact if she needed to get in touch. Upon reflection, Luca didn’t really know why he had left the message in the first place, but it had seemed to him that someone needed to know where he was going. He had no brothers or sisters, and had barely spoken to his parents since his teenage years. On the rare occasions when life did bring them together, all that remained was an unspoken animosity coupled with a genuine confusion as to how such different people could share the same genes.

  So Luca had rung Bear, and even now could hear the recrimination in his own voice. It was that same perfunctory tone he used to shut everyone out. It was always like that. No matter how hard he tried to say what he felt, there was always this unspoken anger, this wall between them.

  At the beginning of their relationship, Luca had been amazed by how quickly he and Bear had seemed to accept each other. There wasn’t any of the usual fear he had experienced in the past. Instead, it felt entirely natural to have her with him, as if it had always been so.

  But just in that one moment, that tipping point where their relationship would have taken shape and solidified into something more meaningful, it suddenly became much more complicated. The issue of her son grew and grew, gnawing away at every other part of their lives. It was terrifying how fast it all seemed to happen; the doubts and ill feeling spreading like a cancer. The very togetherness they had felt at the beginning of their relationship soon twisted into a resentment that was equally palpable. On it went, day after day, without Luca facing up to the real issues. Finally, all he could think to do was run.

  He sighed, slumping back into the uncomfortable seat of the plane. Why did he always cut away like that? Why did he always choose solitude over confrontation? Shaking his head, he wondered whether Bear had even listened to the message in the first place. With all that had happened, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had deleted it straight away.

  ‘Go! Go!’ came the loader’s voice, rousing him from his thoughts. This time he was gesturing to Luca to don the last of his outer clothing. They were nearly there.

  As Luca looked about him, he realised the light outside the plane had changed. Through the single porthole in the cargo bay, he could see the first ice as they passed through the Antarctic Circle and into perpetual daylight. Beneath him were immense tabular icebergs, forerunners of the mighty continent ahead, while a shimmering, yellow light haloed the horizon. It was the sun’s rays being reflected back into the sky by the sheer mass of ice that was Antarctica.

  Luca had seen mountains and glaciers before, but never anything on this scale. Antarctica was simply titanic. Stretching out before him was an entire new world, one that had been waiting there all along around the underside of the globe. Antarctica – the only land on the planet not owned by a single nation. The last great wilderness on earth.

  There was a clunk as the landing gear unfurled. Then, as the plane descended on its final approach, a horizon of ice seemed to rise up above the porthole. Suddenly everything went white.

  The plane thumped down on the runway, sending a metallic ripple through the fuel drums. As the engines roared in reverse thrust, clouds of loose snow blew up past the wingtips, reducing visibility to zero. On they went, the speed gradually bleeding off with each metre as they approached the end section of the runway, until the enormous machine finally ground to a halt. Before the noise of the engines had even wound down, the main door was heaved open and a bitter cold came rushing inside. It sucked out the warm, stale air from the flight, replacing it with a bone-dry cold that pierced Luca’s lungs.

  Getting to his feet, he grabbed his rucksack and moved over to the door. Beyond was a landscape of unending ice, stretching out as far as he could see. ‘English!’

  He looked down to see a man standing on the edge of the runway with his arms held wide. He was wearing a one-piece padded suit that seemed to accentuate his already bulbous waistline. Evidently the suit had once been bright red, but now the fabric more resembled the colour of the engine grease splattered across its knees and chest.

  The man’s bushy beard looked like a continuation of the fur lining of his jacket, while his cheeks were tanned the colour of mahogany. As Luca descended the steps of the plane, the man’s dark brown eyes stared at him unflinchingly from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. After a moment’s reflection he grunted, as if he had been anticipating something more. Then he pulled himself to his full height and shook Luca’s hand.

  ‘I am Vladimir Dedov, base commander of GARI,’ he said, crunching Luca’s knuckles in a bear-like paw. He then wagged one finger of his gloved hand beneath Luca’s nose as if about to impart a rare nugget of wisdom. ‘And if I like you, you can call me “Poet”.’

  ‘Matthews,’ Luca said, already wondering why someone as important as the base commander was here to collect him. It just wasn’t the Russian way. He’d seen the strict sense of hierarchy before, like some hangover from the Soviet past. The base commander being here meant one of only two things: either somebody deemed Luca very important, or Dedov had lost control of the base.

  The Russian sniffed loudly, wiping his nose with the back of his glove.

  ‘It’s cold out. Let’s go.’

  Motioning for Luca to get on board the tractor parked behind them, Dedov barked a few orders in Russian towards the plane loaders before clambering up into the driver’s seat. They jumped at the sound of his voice, scurrying off without a second’s hesitation.

  ‘Now,’ he said, half turning to Luca, ‘if you are going to work at my base, I want to have a picture of your family and to know where they live.’ He paused, locking his gaze on the newcomer. ‘Just in case,’ he added by way of explanation.

>   Luca stared at him, mind racing. The seconds passed in silence before Dedov suddenly grabbed Luca’s shoulder, jostling it roughly.

  ‘I make joke!’ He beamed, his massive frame shaking with hilarity and causing his glasses to slip to the end of his nose. ‘All Westerners think Russians are like gangster.’

  ‘I didn’t . . .’

  ‘But I make joke on this,’ Dedov continued, obviously pleased with himself. As the shaking of his shoulders finally abated, he sniffed the air, nostrils flaring widely.

  ‘Only some are gangster,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Since collapse of Soviet times, only men with connections rise to top. They are like fat cream on milk. They are the ones that are gangster.’ He spat the words out as if they were leaving an unpleasant taste in his mouth. ‘A long time ago, I chose to come to Antarctica because, in this place, we have no such people. Here, we are free.’

  He lit a cigarette, letting the smoke hang in the air for a moment before inching open the tractor’s window.

  ‘But even here, it is not like Lenin’s dream. Everyone is not equal.’ A smile passed across his face. ‘How do your pigs say? Some are more equal than others!’

  Dedov looked across to Luca for confirmation, but quickly realised that there would be little in the way of small talk.

  ‘So, report says you are big climbing man. Real alpinist,’ he queried, clearly doubting such an accolade. ‘You climbed in Russia?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nowhere in whole of Russia?’

  ‘It doesn’t have any high mountains,’ Luca replied. ‘I climbed in the old Soviet bloc.’

  ‘Hah! Russia. Soviet. You had your empire. We had ours. But tell me, what mountain?’