by Tom Harper
Getting some interesting results from my probe at Vitangelsk. Levels ~ 1400.
In case you’re wondering, there actually is a physicist at Rutgers called Guy Roache. Except, he spells his name without an ‘e’. The email address I used was a good-looking fake set up by my buddies at Fort Meade. The messages went all the way to New Jersey, then bounced right back to Echo Bay to set up a meet with Bill Malick. Vitangelsk was the place, 14:00 was the time. The tilde meant ‘today’.
You’re probably thinking it’s kind of dumb. But we had to be careful. Rumour at Zodiac was that Quam used his administrator privileges to read other people’s mail. If he’d caught me giving out data, he’d have had me on the first plane out of there.
Not that that was a problem now, with the Twin Otter trashed.
I still wanted to know what Hagger could’ve found up there. For starters, it might explain some things I needed to know. For another thing, it might have gotten him killed. If I was going to meet Malick in Vitangelsk, I had to be prepared.
I let myself in to Hagger’s lab and found someone already there. Anderson was on a stool, squinting into a microscope. A green notebook lay open on the bench beside him. Beside that, like he’d just taken it out of his pocket, lay a key on a teddy-bear key ring.
‘Feeling OK?’ I asked, like I’d come to see how he was doing. I tried not to stare at the key too obviously.
‘Better, thanks.’ He smiled. ‘It’s very strange, missing two days of your life. You go around the whole time with that feeling you’ve forgotten to turn off the gas.’
‘And back at work already.’ Edging closer, I could see it was a Yale key. And under the microscope, he had a section of yellow tube that looked like the pipes at Echo Bay.
‘I’m trying to tidy up a few things Hagger left behind.’
‘Whatcha got?’
‘Nothing I can understand.’ He picked up the notebook and pulled a loose-leaf sheet from between the pages. A computer printout, covered in a grid of zeros, ones and twos. ‘This, for example. I can’t make head nor tail of it.’
I’d wondered what Hagger did with that. I thought about telling the truth, and couldn’t see any reason why not.
‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘I gave it to Hagger. I was getting interference with my instruments. One day, I was playing around with frequencies trying to figure it out and I picked up this fragment. Nothing else, just a series of numbers. I showed it to a few people at Zodiac to see if it had anything to do with their work. Hagger didn’t know, but he was interested. He liked crossword puzzles; said he’d see if he could do something with it.’
Anderson looked it over. ‘The twos are what make it odd.’
Smart cookie. ‘That’s what we thought. Zeros and ones could just be any kind of binary, what you’d expect. The twos make no sense.’
‘And this is all you managed to get?’
‘Yeah.’ I gave him back the paper; it was only a copy. ‘Did you ever find out what Hagger wanted up on the Helbreen? I mean, his major work was on sea ice, right?’
‘It’s possible Hagger had traced some sort of chemical in the sea ice. He thought it might be coming off the glacier in meltwater.’
I dismissed that. It might have been what he was looking for, but it wasn’t what got him killed. ‘Nothing about DAR-X in the notebook?’
‘That was a different project.’ He slid off the stool so I could take a look through the microscope. ‘Some micro-organism in the water was corroding their pipes. They asked Hagger to analyse it.’
I was more interested in the pipe than the bugs in the water. I hoped I’d find something inside it, fibre optics or antenna cable. So far as I could see, it was just a hollow tube.
‘How about that key?’ I asked. Casual as I could. ‘Last I heard, we didn’t have any locks at Zodiac.’
A strange look crossed his face, like he wished I hadn’t seen it. I could see him thinking about what to tell me.
‘I found it where Hagger died, by the crevasse. It must have fallen out of his pocket.’
That got my attention – if it was true. ‘Did Hagger have a filing cabinet, or a desk drawer he kept locked?’
He waved his hand around the lab. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. As you say, there aren’t any locks at Zodiac.’
‘No secrets among friends,’ I said cheerfully.
‘Maybe it was his house key and he forgot it was in his pocket.’
‘Maybe he had a secret liquor cabinet chilling in the glacier.’
We both laughed.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘Need to check my emails. Let me know if you find anything.’
‘Right away,’ he promised.
I could tell he wanted me to leave, so I didn’t linger. I went straight out in the corridor. Of course, I left the door open a tad. The corridor’s so dark, you wouldn’t really see someone watching you through the crack.
As soon as I was gone, Anderson took the key off the bench and hid it in a drawer. I guess he wished he could have locked it away safe – but there are no locks at Zodiac. Nothing to stop a guy going into a lab at night and taking something out of a drawer.
Back in my room, the reply had come in from Malick.
I’m in meetings all day, but hopefully can get to it tomorrow. Levels >1400 definitely something worth talking about.
He couldn’t make it until tomorrow. I remembered what Greta had said and called up the weather forecast. It didn’t look good. A polar low was heading our way from Greenland: I could see the comma cloud coming together on the satellite, the long tail starting to turn. Those things move almost as fast as a hurricane. When it hit, it was going to get ugly.
But I had to get back to Vitangelsk, and see if the key fitted the lock.
Twenty-five
Eastman
I could have just snuck off, and taken Quam’s shit later. But if anyone noticed me gone, I didn’t want them sending out search parties with a storm coming in. So, next morning, I spun him a line.
‘One of the struts buckled on my radio telescope,’ I told him. If you’re going to lie, lie consistently. ‘If I don’t get it fixed before the storm comes, the whole thing could go.’
Of course he said no. ‘Safety is paramount.’
‘I’ve just been shortlisted for a million-dollar grant from the NO double A. You want me to tell them I can’t bring it to Zodiac because my instruments got trashed in a storm?’
Everyone has weaknesses. Quam’s were more transparent than most. Mention a grant, you could almost see the dollar signs ring up in his eyes.
‘Everyone has experiments running out there.’
‘So don’t tell them. I won’t sign out; I’ll check in directly with you on the satphone. No one has to know.’
‘But you can’t go on your own.’
I pointed out the window, to the upper slopes of the mountain behind us. Clouds dashed over it.
‘I’m not going far.’
Quam played with the Newton’s cradle executive-toy thing he had on his desk – the classic bureaucrat’s move. I tell you, Captain, only the fucking Brits would send a vanilla guy like that to run a place like Utgard. Maybe he was good at cricket.
‘Don’t let the others see you,’ he said.
Just as I was leaving, I pretended I’d thought of something else.
‘Don’t worry if I’m out for a while. If the weather goes south too soon, I’ll stay in the caboose up there.’
I thought he’d complain. Perhaps he wanted to, but didn’t have the strength. He slouched in his chair as if something had snapped inside of him.
‘Please don’t let anything happen to you. It’s my job, if anything else happens.’
‘It’s my life,’ I pointed out.
I didn’t much care about the storm. If it got too bad, I could hole up in one of the buildings at Vitangelsk until it passed. I made sure I packed fuel for the MSR, and plenty of food. Plus a few pieces of equipment from my lab that had nothing to do with survival.
The hardest part was getting away. There’s no quiet way to drive a snowmobile. In the end, I had to disengage the drive belt, and push the thing around the base of the hill like a broken-down car. If anyone heard it from there, they could think what they liked. I opened up the throttle, turned on my iPod and let rip.
Was I scared? Not really. At that speed, you feel invincible. The clouds built their castles in the sky; the wind cried against my helmet. The flat light smoothed the terrain so you couldn’t see the bumps, but I didn’t care. I was riding the storm.
I got to Vitangelsk early. I parked my snowmobile in the square and made a circuit of the town, to be sure there wasn’t anyone waiting. If you think a frozen ghost town is freaky, wait until you’ve been in a frozen ghost town with a storm building. Down the valley, I could see dark clouds gathering out over the ocean. The moment I took my helmet off, the ice in the air stung me so bad I had to put it back on. But with my ears covered, I couldn’t hear a thing. I took it off again. I should have brought goggles, but all I had was my sunglasses. When I put them on, the dark day got darker. Every shadow was rendered deep black, every building looked like the House on Haunted Hill. Even the fucking snow looked dark.
I didn’t see anyone else in town. That didn’t mean they didn’t see me. I kept looking over my shoulder as I went back to the HQ building. The moment I was through the door, I took off my sunglasses and got to work.
The padlock was still there. A Yale lock, just like I remembered. I had Greta’s bolt cutters with me, but first I wanted to try something. I took out the key I’d borrowed from Anderson’s lab and pushed it in the lock.
It fitted. I twisted and it turned, smooth as butter, no hint of rust or age. The hasp popped open and the lock dropped into my hand. I stared at it like it had fallen from outer space.
‘And what in hell were you doing with that key, Dr Hagger?’ I asked aloud.
I put my shoulder against the steel trapdoor and heaved. It resisted a second, but only because of the weight. Nothing wrong with the hinges. The door swung up and clicked into the upright position.
‘Anyone home?’ I called. All I heard back was the wind howling around the outside of the building.
I took off my hat and hooked it on the rifle muzzle, then pushed it up through the hatch. A dumb trick – I probably got it from an old war movie. Anyhow, nothing happened. Either there wasn’t anyone there, or they’d seen the same movie.
Leading with the rifle, I put my head through the hatch. Even in the cold, my forehead prickled with sweat; my heart was going about a million miles an hour. I’d never felt so naked and so alive.
Above the first floor, the whole building had been gutted out. No internal walls, no floors, not even a roof. Just a brick shaft, three storeys high and open to the sky. Over my head, out of reach, eight cables came through the walls from different directions and met together in a long steel needle suspended in mid-air, pointing straight at outer space. A couple inches of snow covered the floor, but there was none on the wires. Someone made sure they got dusted off pretty regularly, it looked like.
I closed the trapdoor behind me, so that no one could sneak up. I checked the lock was in my pocket: I didn’t want to get locked in. Then I examined the antenna.
Keeping equipment in any kind of shape up there is tough. I should know. But this was pristine: all the cables tight, the metal buffed. A single wire hung down from the needle to a cleat in the floor, then ran across into a black box bolted on to the wall.
I went over and checked it out. Nothing on the outside to say what it did, not even a light to show if the power was on. A black box in every sense of the word. The only opening was the socket where the cable plugged in.
I squinted at the plug. It looked like a regular RF. The same kind I use to connect my instruments.
I took off my pack and got out my laptop. It wouldn’t boot, so I popped the battery and stuck it down my shorts for five minutes. Meanwhile, I found the interface cable I use when I’m in the field and connected it to the laptop. I put in the warmed-up battery and started the computer.
‘Here goes nothing.’
I yanked out the cable from the box. Somewhere on Utgard, if someone was watching satellite TV, I’d just ruined his show.
I didn’t waste time. Even weatherised, the battery doesn’t last much more than fifteen minutes in that cold. I connected the RF plug to the laptop, and opened a software transceiver program I use. I dialled it in to the C-band frequencies and hit record. I didn’t bother with transforms or other graphical shit: I just wanted to grab it as fast as I could.
The battery was dying in front of my eyes. When it hit ten per cent, I saved the file and shut down. Then I plugged the cable back in the black box. Didn’t want to piss off whoever the signal belonged to. With luck, they’d think it was the storm screwing with the transmission.
Or maybe they were closer than I’d thought. Before I’d even zipped my bag, I heard a creak on the stairs. I forgot the pack and grabbed my rifle. More creaks – definitely someone coming up. He stopped, just the other side of the trapdoor. I aimed the rifle.
The steel door squeaked. A gloved hand pushed it up until it latched open.
‘If you take another step, I’m going to blow your head off,’ I warned.
I heard him stop. Then, a rustling sound as he unzipped his coat. A hundred crazy scenarios played out in my head. What if he had a grenade? Or a bomb? Or—
A head popped up like a rabbit through the hatch. I was so wired, I almost pulled the trigger right there.
‘Jesus, Bob,’ said Malick. ‘I thought you wanted to see me.’
Twenty-six
Eastman
He lifted himself through the hatch. He noticed I hadn’t moved the gun.
‘What is this?’
‘You tell me.’ I nodded at the antenna hanging in the space above us like a giant spider. ‘In fact, there’s a few conversations we need to have.’
He looked up, and did a pretty good job of making himself seem surprised. ‘What the hell is that thing?’
‘You tell me,’ I said again.
‘I swear on my mother’s grave, I never saw it in my life.’
‘Yeah?’
He chuckled. ‘Truth to tell, Mom’s alive and well, doing just fine in Fort Lauderdale. But you get the point.’
I didn’t smile. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’
‘I only came here because you asked me, Bob. If you want to show me whatever fancy toy you’ve got here, you go right ahead. But don’t make out like I should know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘It’s not my toy. It’s a satellite antenna – and I want you to tell me what you’re doing with it.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m in the oil business.’
‘Really? I heard you have something called methane clathrates coming out of that well.’
He didn’t argue the point. ‘Either way, DAR-X isn’t exactly AT&T. We’ve got Iridium and UHF at Echo Bay, and that does us fine. We’re not searching for E.T. in our spare time.’
‘You expect me to believe that.’
He managed to make himself look genuinely hurt. ‘As a matter of fact, Bob, yeah, I do.’
I pitched him the change-up. ‘Tell me about Martin Hagger.’
He looked confused. ‘Your guy who fell down the crevasse?’
‘Who was doing a special project for you. Why did you need to get rid of him?’
Malick just stared at me. Big Texas oilmen don’t go down easy, but he looked floored.
I switched up again. ‘Were you here two days ago, Bill? Any of your people chasing us? Our doc almost got himself killed, running away from some guy in a yellow parka shooting at him.’
The fear I’d felt was flowing out now. Strength and weakness, it’s the same thing, they just run in opposite directions depending on which way the switch is flipped. I had the gun; I could make him do what I wanted. I jabbed it at him in case he’d forgotten.
&nbs
p; ‘I can account for every one of my guys. None of them’s been up here since the weekend. Show’s over; we’re breaking down the camp. Heading home tomorrow.’
That surprised me, if it was true. Maybe now they had this thing up, they could leave it to run itself.
‘Can we rewind?’ said Malick. ‘I came here because you said you had some data for me.’
‘I lied.’ I’ll admit it, I enjoyed saying that. Something about a gun that strips away the bullshit. ‘I just had to get you here.’
‘So you could show me this space needle?’
‘So you could tell me what it’s about.’
He looked at me like I was crazy.
‘What the hell are you on? Yeah, we’re drilling for methane at Echo Bay. Yeah, we were having problems with the pipes and Hagger looked into it. All above board. Why he died, and what that has to do with this great big radio you’ve found – maybe you can tell me.’
‘You know who you’re working for?’
‘I work for DAR-X.’
‘I mean, who’s paying you.’
‘Some company out of the Bahamas. Why are you looking at me like that? They’ve got the concession, they’ve got the permits, they’ve got the paperwork. We’re just the contractors. The only reason we keep quiet about the methane is to stop Greenpeace getting on our asses. You saw what they did to Shell in Alaska.’
‘The guys you’re working for are Russians, Bill. I guess you know that. And they don’t give a damn about gas or oil, do they?’
‘They do when I give them my progress reports.’
I nodded my head up at the giant web above us. ‘This is what it’s all about.’
He shrugged. ‘If I even knew what it was, I could tell you why you’re wrong.’
We stared each other down, like two gunslingers in a stand-off. Except, I was the only guy with a gun. And you know what?
I had no clue what the hell to do with it.
Like I said before, I’m a scientist, not Jack Bauer. I couldn’t waterboard the guy, or hook electrodes on his balls. I’d counted on the gun to scare him into confessing. Now what?
