‘So, who exactly is this Beatrice Makuru?’ she asked, her voice tinged with the slightest trace of a New York accent.
‘My man’s ex-girlfriend. She’s a mining investigator for Anglo-Africa, so I thought a little reassurance wouldn’t go amiss.’
‘Well, I’m sure a man like you can handle her easily enough. No doubt you’ll do whatever it takes to keep her from asking any more questions.’
Bates nodded, trying to ignore the flattery.
‘And this contact of yours, Luca Matthews. You seem confident he’ll get the job done.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Bates replied, nodding again, but almost as soon as he said the words, an image came to him of Luca crumpled into that decrepit armchair on the oil rig. Only now that everything had been set in motion did it really sink in that Bates was entrusting everything to a man who was all but broken. Was Luca really up to the challenge? Bates’ single consolation was that the task itself was incredibly simple: insert the memory stick into GARI’s satellite terminal. That was all Luca had to do. Whether the British scientists made it to the drill site or not was an irrelevance.
‘An ideal opportunity presented itself, and it seemed a great deal neater than trying to hack in remotely to the Antarctic station as originally planned. We couldn’t have sent in one of our own chaps. The Russians would never have bought it. Had to be a real climber, you see.’
Eleanor seemed to accept Bates’ appraisal of the situation. She then shifted in her seat, her mind switching to the next item in a long list.
‘We got word yesterday from the Chileans. They will follow the initial land claim of the British and ratify it. The only caveat is that they want the Argentinian claim rejected out of hand.’
Bates smiled knowingly. ‘Nothing like hatred of one’s neighbour, eh?’
Ignoring the quip, Eleanor widened her eyes slightly to ensure that she had his full attention.
‘Everything has to follow one after the other, in the right order. Each land claim must fall in succession, like dominoes. The Russians will be too busy defending themselves to realise what’s really at stake.’
‘And the others?’
Eleanor shrugged. ‘The only other major contenders are the Chinese and Indians, but relatively speaking they’re still bit players in Antarctica. They are building a lot of new bases at the moment, with the Indians just having completed Larsemann Hills, but we’re still ahead of the curve. My analysts suggest there shouldn’t be too much fallout from them.’
Closing the folder that had been resting on her lap, Eleanor placed it on the desk in front of her.
‘It’s all in here. The Antarctic Treaty will be dismantled under Part Twelve, Protocol Seven.’ She said the last words slowly, keeping her eyes locked on his. ‘The Americans will be granted an official mandate to go in and clean up the mess. And that’s when we will stake our claim.’
‘So everything is set?’
‘Not quite. There’s still one piece left.’
Bates waited for her to elaborate, but her expression remained fixed. Eleanor had previously decided she would disclose this part of the operation, but now old doubts resurfaced and she found herself instinctively holding back.
‘The other piece?’ he prompted.
Eleanor’s lips pursed while she deliberated. Eventually she decided to stay on track. ‘The final piece in all of this is to trigger the event itself. And that’s all in the hands of a man named Richard Pearl.’
Bates’ forehead creased as he tried to place the name.
‘You mean, the US senator?’
Eleanor nodded.
‘Isn’t he the one who survived the submarine incident all those years back?’ Bates added, trying to recall the details of an event that had been global news nearly a decade ago. ‘He made it out with that other guy . . .’
‘Fedor Stang,’ Eleanor interjected.
‘That’s right,’ Bates replied. ‘I read Stang’s obituary in The Times a while back. The submarine was a new class they were testing when its reactor failed. They were trapped down there for nearly two weeks or so.’
‘Sixteen days. And it was the prototype of the new Virginia Class submarine currently in production,’ Eleanor corrected. ‘There was a skeleton crew of twenty-seven men on board, but in the end only Pearl and Stang made it out alive.’
There was silence as Bates imagined being trapped a mile under the ocean with a dwindling supply of oxygen. The waiting, the desperation, then the horror of watching the entire crew slowly suffocate. Stang and Pearl would have had to witness each man’s death, never knowing that their own rescue was just at hand.
Bates could remember the disbelief among the world’s media when one of the submersibles had finally reached the stricken vessel. No one had expected there to be anything on board but corpses as the scientists on the surface had done their calculations and there just wasn’t enough air to sustain the crew. But somehow two men had survived.
Now that Bates thought back to it, he could remember an image of Fedor Stang from his obituary. The picture was of him being helped off the rescue boat by two young marines. Fedor had broken both legs when the submarine had first become stricken and was being carted off to hospital in a wheelchair. But even sitting, it was clear that he was a giant of a man. He also looked far from American with his white-blond hair and classic Scandinavian looks, but reading further down the page Bates had discovered that, although born in Norway, Fedor had been raised in America from an early age.
He had been the ranking officer on board the submarine and, after surviving such an ordeal, had become something of a legend in the US navy. His celebrity status helped to secure his next promotion, and from then on he had achieved a meteoric ascent through the ranks. Two years ago he had become a full Vice Admiral before suddenly falling prey to a particularly virulent form of stomach cancer. He had died only two months after his discharge.
Eleanor retrieved the glasses from her forehead and carefully studied them.
‘Richard Pearl was only a petty officer during the submarine incident,’ she said. ‘According to our reports, he dropped out soon afterwards and suffered nearly three years of depression. Somehow he managed to pull himself out of it and successfully reinvent himself. He went on to found a voice-recognition tech company back in 2006, which made him very wealthy, very quickly. Then he founded a few other companies before running for Senate last year in what was a very slick campaign.’
‘Isn’t he the senator who won’t travel to any city with certain levels of air pollution?’ Bates added, an incredulous smile appearing on his lips. ‘Didn’t he turn down the chance to go on a trade mission to Shanghai recently because of the smog there?’
Eleanor nodded. ‘Pearl believes he has chronic asthma as a direct result of oxygen depletion suffered during the submarine incident. He uses an inhaler almost constantly, and even has oxygen pumped into his residence in San Diego. But according to our sources there is no physical basis for this. His condition is purely psychosomatic.’
Bates shook his head, then grunted. ‘Guess I’d have a few foibles if I had seen my entire crew suffocate in front of me. But what is his connection to this project exactly?’
‘Pearl is the one who’s going to start the ball rolling. It’s all in the file. I just wanted to give you some background on the man, as . . . well, let’s just say, he is complicated.’
Pushing the inch-thick file across the desk, Eleanor raised herself to her feet, slipping her cashmere overcoat across her shoulders.
Bates looked up at her. ‘Before you go, I wanted to clarify something. Parker has gone a long way down the line on this and for obvious reasons. The British will get a slice of Antarctica and that’s something we have been after for a long time. But we’re essentially working blind here and, I think you’ll agree, the risk is significant.’
Eleanor remained silent, to all intents and purposes waiting for him to continue while inwardly her mind had suddenly filled with unspeakable do
ubts. ‘Significant’ didn’t even come close. If word of this got out it would tear apart US foreign policy for the next decade.
‘Why is all this happening now?’ Bates continued. ‘The Antarctic Treaty has been in effect since the sixties, with the US never recognising a single land claim. No one owns the land down there and you’ve been happy in that knowledge for nearly fifty years. What’s suddenly changed? I’m only asking because what we are planning is seriously going to upset the apple cart.’
A brief smile passed across Eleanor’s lips at the Englishman’s turn of phrase, then it faded and she suddenly looked very tired. What they were attempting was the greatest land grab of the last two centuries, which if successful would ensure the continuation of the US as the world’s leading superpower. If not, it would undoubtedly start them on a downward trajectory from which they would probably never recover. It took several seconds for her to regain her composure. Then, tilting her head to one side, she fixed Bates with a coy smile. ‘All in good time,’ she purred. ‘Now, why don’t you order me a car?’
Chapter 8
THE CONVOY OF tractors ground on.
Luca sat in the back seat of one, trying to ignore the stench of diesel fumes and clouds of cigarette smoke wafting back from the driver. The lingering taste of vodka had finally gone; but with it went the heady self-confidence he had felt on first leaving GARI. As the hours had passed, new doubts had risen like bile in his throat, while his mouth had gone so dry that he was finding it hard to swallow.
Luca knew that he had to compartmentalise his feelings and trust that something of his old self remained, but his mind kept circling back to the fact that it had been three years since he had last stood on the side of a mountain. Three years.
Unclipping his rucksack, he began checking through the quickdraws and carabiners, counting them out as he clipped them on to the back of his climbing harness. As he opened the screw-gate of the second one, the carabiner suddenly slipped from his grasp, spinning down into the metal footwell of the tractor. It clattered so loudly that even the drunken Russian sitting opposite was roused from his stupor.
Luca looked up, straight into the man’s eyes. It felt as if the Russian could see right through him; see the fear inside. But just as Luca went to blurt out an apology, the man’s head lolled backwards, cracking against the side glass of the window. He was so drunk that he didn’t even notice.
Luca exhaled slowly, trying to blank out what had just happened. But the fact remained that he had clipped and unclipped thousands of carabiners before and couldn’t remember the last time he had dropped one. What had once been instinctual was now clumsy and unfamiliar. He knew that the incident itself could easily be brushed aside, yet deep down it sharpened everything into focus. The truth was obvious: he was in no shape to take on this job.
His thoughts turned to Bear and for the briefest moment he allowed himself the fantasy that he could confide in her and that she would make it all go away. But deep down he knew that she would have done nothing but admonish him for being so pathetic. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, more that she just didn’t tolerate any sort of procrastination and would always delve straight to the core of the problem. Bear did what needed to be done. It was just how she was wired.
God, he missed that about her; missed the strength of her convictions and the way it always seemed to rub off on him.
Luca heard a shout and then the sound of the tractor’s gearing grinding down. With a final lurch, the convoy drew to a standstill directly under the jagged peaks of the mountain range. Long shadows stretched down from the highest summits as if beckoning them closer, but to Luca, they only reinforced his own sense of foreboding.
Stepping out into the deep snow, he stared up at the nearest cliff face. It rose like a monolith from an open desert and would definitely require some technical climbing. Why the hell had Dedov chosen this place? In the long range of mountains, surely there was an easier route than this across to the lake. Luca wondered if this wasn’t some part of a deliberate plan to test his climbing prowess.
Turning back the way they had come, he looked across the snow and ice, endlessly shimmering under a low sun. The landscape was inert, desolate.
‘English!’
He turned to see Dedov’s bulbous head hanging out of the window of a tractor just in front.
‘Take this,’ he shouted, handing across a small parcel wrapped in fleece cloth. ‘It’s a satellite phone.’
‘Already have one,’ Luca replied, patting his rucksack.
‘Then have two.’
Luca nodded, staring along the line of tractors as the other Englishmen began to pile their rucksacks and equipment on the snow. None of the Russians were helping. Instead, they glowered from behind closed windows, the previous bonhomie at the base drained by the hours of travel and the endless rumbling road.
‘We have dropped you on eastern side and now you follow the route I marked,’ Dedov said, his watery gaze fixed on Luca. ‘And report everything you see.’
The driver next to him stabbed a finger towards the high peaks. A new wind was blowing across the summits, dusting off the snow and causing a trail to reach out across the sky like the wash of a plane’s jet engine. The weather was already starting to turn.
‘Dedov,’ Luca called up. ‘You make sure the tractors are here in time.’
The Russian smiled. ‘They’ll be here. And if you make it back safe, you get to call me Poet!’ He then slapped his driver on the shoulder, signalling for them to leave.
Luca only nodded as he watched the snow kick up behind the massive tracks of the vehicles as the convoy pulled off. Thirty yards behind him the other Englishmen instinctively grouped together as the landscape seemed to expand around them. No one spoke; all eyes watched the vehicles gradually recede, until finally they dipped out of sight behind a low rise.
Everyone was waiting, desperate for someone to break the silence of the mountains.
‘Luca!’
He turned in response and saw Joel approach, followed by two other men. As they drew closer, Luca pulled his sunglasses down to conceal the hesitancy in his own eyes.
‘This is Andy McBride,’ Joel said, gesturing towards the heavy-set man standing closest to him. He was wearing reflective orange goggles and a thick fur hat that wrapped right across his chin so that the only visible part of his face was a pair of rouged lips, blistered by the sun.
‘All right, mate?’ Andy offered with a quick wave of his hand.
‘And this is Katz.’
Jonathan Katz walked around the pile of rucksacks, taking off his right glove before shaking Luca’s hand.
‘So you’re the new guide,’ he said, tilting his head forward and peering over the top of his sunglasses as if inspecting the fine print of a book. ‘Hope you do a better job than the last one we had.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Andy muttered.
‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Katz snapped over his shoulder. He was a big man in his early-fifties with receding blond hair that accentuated an already high forehead. His eyes were pale blue and lacked any trace of empathy. Instead they seemed to shimmer with untapped annoyance. ‘Idiot led them straight over a crevasse field. What did he expect?’
‘That could’ve happened to any one of us,’ Andy retorted, clearly happy to rekindle an old argument.
‘Well, you can be damn sure of one thing – it’s not going to happen to me. Isn’t that right, Matthews? We heard a lot about you on the drive over. Apparently, you’re the “real deal”.’ He said the last words with a faux-American accent, drawing them out.
Luca looked from one man to the next, quickly realising that he was somehow going to have to stop their incessant bickering and unite them as a team.
‘Save your energy,’ he said, keeping his voice low to bring them in close. ‘We have seventy-two hours, maybe less if the weather hits early. So I’m going to make this really simple – you do exactly as I say on the mountain. And I mean exactly.’ He t
hen turned specifically to Katz. ‘From now on, the past is exactly that. Antarctica won’t give a shit about your petty crap. Give her the chance and she’ll swallow us whole. All of us.’
Turning back towards the pile of kit, he pulled his rucksack on to his shoulders. ‘Get ready. We’re going to move fast and get the job done. Together.’
Luca led through the snowfield. The four men were roped together, moving with the same lurching gait as convicts in a chain gang. Every few minutes, the rope would tug at Luca’s harness as Katz, positioned directly behind, struggled to keep pace through the deep snow. He had already taken off his hat and unzipped his Gore-Tex jacket all the way down to his waist in an effort to cool himself down, but sweat still beaded across his forehead. Luca could see it glistening in the sun, plastering his thinning hair to the brow of his head.
The rope pulled tight again, bringing them to a standstill. Katz took off his sunglasses, mopping at the sweat welling into his eyes. He began to tuck them into his jacket pocket when Luca called out: ‘Put them back on. You’ll go snow blind.’
‘But they steam up!’ Katz protested, squinting in the glare. Luca didn’t respond, waiting for him to comply. Katz made a show of cleaning the lenses, holding the smeary glass up to the light.
‘Put ’em on, Katz!’ Andy shouted from twenty feet further down the snow slope. He was doubled over, hands resting on his knees, but obviously keen to keep moving.
Katz’s body visibly flinched at the command, his exhaustion quickly turning to anger at being given an order by anyone other than their guide. Luca could see him muttering a string of invective as he jammed the glasses back on and the lenses immediately fogged up once again. He fussed some more with his clothing, deliberately keeping everyone waiting.
Luca stared down at his watch. Even pushing them like this, the pace was slow. He didn’t want them to sweat like they were doing because he knew the moisture would be trapped in their thermal layers and make them cold. But, by the same token, they had to keep ahead of the storm. The problem wasn’t with Joel or Andy, they were moving relatively well, but Katz was seriously out of shape. Luca could hear the rasping in his lungs, the sick wheeze of a body working beyond its limit. He must have been a smoker at some stage in the past, or, more likely, still was.
Beneath the Ice Page 9
