by Laline Paull
‘Learned it from you,’ Tom used to say. ‘I don’t stop for arseholes.’
‘Up in our country we are human! And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. If I get something today, you may get it tomorrow. Some men never kill anything because they are seldom lucky or they may not be able to run or row as fast as others. Therefore they would feel unhappy to have to be thankful to their fellows all the time. And it would not be fun for the big hunter to feel that other men were constantly humbled by him. Then his pleasure would die. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves, and by whips one makes dogs.’
A hunter, to Peter Freuchen
Arctic Adventure: My Life in the Frozen North (1936)
Peter Freuchen
5
Fourteen nations signed the Svalbard Treaty of 1920, giving each of them the right to settle, purchase property and conduct business on the archipelago, provided that, in the words of the legislation, it was ‘not for war-like purposes’. By the time Sean Cawson was writing draft after draft of his purchase proposal for the old whaling station, the Treaty had forty-three signatories and seven new-formed states seeking approval. But treaties and laws are as subject to ageing as the hands that wrote them and the times to which they applied.
Family firms likewise. The derelict structures he bought by consortium and rechristened Midgard Lodge, were built and owned for two hundred years by a wealthy Norwegian family: the Pedersens. The oldest members lived in fossilised grandeur in Oslo but had devolved power two decades previously to their children, now themselves in late middle age and dispersed all over the world. They avoided each other in person, but each sensational headline about ‘the race for the High North’, or the ‘Arctic Cold Rush’, stirred their conscience, or their greed.
The youngest generation of adult Pedersens rejected their elders’ pride in their whaling past, instead feeling shame that their family fortune was built on the near-genocide of several cetacean and pinniped species. It was like inherited wealth from slavery – no bar to public office, as Great Britain proved, but something they felt a debt to repay. In karmic offset, they embraced diverse environmental causes to distance themselves from the documented accounts of their forebears, of the joyful slaughter of pregnant beluga whales in Midgardfjorden, and the flensing of live walruses on the beach they still owned. The surviving elders, who still used the candelabra made of narwhal horn on Sunday nights: they wanted the whales to come back to be hunted again, and mourned many aspects of the past under the safe code word: Tradition. The middle generation just wanted the money, and so in strictest confidentiality, in Doha, Wellington, Manhattan and Johannesburg, they made discreet inquiries about the old lodge on the shores of Midgardfjorden. The price it might fetch, the complications.
In strictest reciprocity in Svalbard, Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø, each realtor charged with this investigation broke into a lubricious sweat at the prospect of the Pedersen family reuniting for one last spectacular kill: private property for sale in Svalbard, demesne to encompass landing beach, deepwater access, and a plot reaching right back to the mountain. Of course all land permanently belonged to the Crown of Norway – but that was a matter of casuistry to vendor and purchaser alike. Numbers were crunched, their bones sucked for all associative commissions. Chins were wiped of slaver at the prospect of selling a piece of the last frontier the world had to offer, before Space. Because the most demurely conservative estimate of the value was stratospheric.
For once the family agreed: it was time to let Midgard go. They chose a single agent, Mr Mogens Hadbold. Very discreetly, he dropped a hint of that possibility into international waters. The feeding frenzy was almost instantaneous. First came the Norwegian government itself, who brought much patriotic pressure to bear on the family agent, who duly passed it on – noting that two Russian oligarchs (bitter rivals) had more than doubled the government’s best offer. Both were ready for a bidding war, but one was ruled out for his rapacious extractive activities in the Laptev Sea, albeit carried out by a Romanian proxy company. The other, a prominent Siberian landowner, had airlifted every polar bear within three hundred square kilometres to create a private reservation close to Moscow ‘for conservation’ where he was reputedly breeding cubs for sale as pets. He too was ineligible.
The still-patriotic Pedersens paused to consider. The property was worth far more than the Norwegian government was willing to offer; why did they did not understand? Their agent explained: if the government paid the premium the Midgard property commanded, they might then find themselves hostage to any Norwegian landowner north of 66 degrees, keen to leverage large amounts of cash. This sad truth caused the Pedersens’ patriotism to somewhat fade.
But other bidders – from the US, Canada, Russia, China (the most) and India, were numerous. Seventy-five per cent were ruled out in the first round of investigations, but then the British-led consortium returned, demanding (‘begging really,’ said the family agent) to be reconsidered. This was because of the new involvement of one Tom Harding – a name that rang discordant bells (Greenpeace?) for the older Pedersens, but chimed most harmoniously (Greenpeace!) for the younger. The young petitioned the old: Tom Harding had led the charge to clear the Plastic Sargasso and driven the public outcry leading to the investigation into clinical trials corruption at Lynch-Ziegler and the collapse of that besmirched chemicals giant. The older generation, privately unconvinced but emotionally blackmailed by their children, allowed that the British consortium could re-submit its proposal – so long as they knew that the odds were against its success.
Long odds were what Sean Cawson had beaten all his life. The sale went through, Midgard Lodge was built and still running despite the terrible accident that had marred its birth – and three and a half years later, here he was disembarking into the sharp mineral air of Longyearbyen once more.
It was good to see Danny Long standing waiting on the tarmac. Behind him was the familiar yellow and blue Dauphin helicopter in which they would fly to Midgard, and standing by his general manager’s side, a Longyearbyen airport official ready to conclude the briefest of passport formalities.
He and Danny greeted each other warmly. There was no difference in Long’s appearance, or his comfortable quiet manner. He was everything you wanted in a pilot, and though Sean had intended to broach the difficult matters straight away – as they rose up over the slopes of the coal mine behind the airport then veered away from the town, he silently absorbed Svalbard’s stark beauty. This time he beheld it without the churning panic of his last visit, unwisely made too soon after the accident, when being there again had jammed his brain with fear and made decisions impossible. He was here to put that failure behind him and lead with confidence again.
Not until they had left the black peaks and steely water of Adventfjord behind them, and were beating their way over the whiteness of the von Postbreen glacier, up to the razor-tipped ice plateau of King Olav’s Land, did he clear his throat. He heard the tiny answering click as Danny Long turned up the sound in readiness. To Sean’s surprise, the pilot spoke first.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you, sir, about Mr Harding. But Mr Kingsmith called, so I told him – then he wanted to tell you himself.’
‘Yes. He told me he’d put a retreat in. You know that—’
‘Yes, sir. Everything to go through London, he set me straight on that earlier today. If you don’t mind my saying, Mr Cawson, it’s good to see you again.’
Sean smiled. ‘And you, Danny. It’s been far too long. But I’m back.’
The pilot looked straight ahead. ‘I still feel very bad about—’
‘Not your fault, Danny.’ Sean looked down at the ice. ‘A true accident.’
‘But if I’d been in there with you …’
‘You were needed on watch. But thank you.’
He remembered how much he liked Danny Long. In his late forties, he was blunt-featured, of average height and stocky build, and his modest
manner belied his high competence – but that was probably part of the protocol of close protection. Kingsmith had told him he had saved his life on two occasions, but the details were private. Sean admired both of them for not turning it into a drinking anecdote.
He stared down at the ice cap, filling up on its peculiar charge of beauty and fear. Today it was glittering white velvet, strewn with lozenges of emerald and turquoise lakes. He did not remember so many of them.
‘Danny – are we going a different route?’
‘No, Mr Cawson, but there are probably some changes that are new to you.’ He veered away, then Sean saw a line of five white radomes on a plateau of tundra. They had not been there the last time he was here.
‘Indian,’ said Danny Long, in answer to his unspoken question. ‘In the last year. Over on Barentsoya there’s another new construction going on. Telecom, or meteorology.’ Danny Long’s eyes crinkled. ‘Improving our broadband.’
‘Good broadband is a valuable asset.’
‘Indeed, sir.’
Sean did not speak again until they were over Hinlopenstreten, where a convoy of cruise ships made white dashes on the dark water. He remembered Kingsmith’s admonition about his friend in Oslo.
‘Have there been many ships in Midgardfjorden? Before that one?’
Danny Long shook his head.
‘Sometimes they stop at the mouth – for photographs, I believe. Then they go round the other way. But the Vanir came right down deep. When it all went off on the radio – not the calving, when they went out and confirmed it was a body – the coastguard were close across at Freyasundet, in that new fast boat of theirs.’
‘Joe said they held it as a crime scene.’ He kept his tone neutral.
‘They did, sir, but they told me and Terry not to worry about the words, it was just so they could take all the phones and such from the passengers.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m not sure. We were ordered to stand down – return to the Lodge – by the coastguard. That’s what we did.’ He paused. ‘We had Mr Kingsmith’s guests to look after.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘Basic facts, sir: a body had been recovered from the water. They didn’t know anything until they came down for breakfast. The coastguard had gone by then.’
‘How were they? The coastguard.’
‘Very polite, sir, as always. It was Inspector Brovang, he was out on their new boat, that’s why he was in the area.’
They were silent for a while, in which Sean imagined the heavy medevac cradle swinging in the air, trails of water falling behind. Tom’s dead body netted and trussed beneath a helicopter, as high as he was now. Less than forty-eight hours ago.
He put his right hand under his left armpit and pressed down on it. The tingling had come back. Nothing physically wrong with his hand, no nerve damage. Brovang had saved it, with his own body heat. He had taken Sean’s statement as he recovered in the Sickehaus in Longyearbyen, but they had not spoken since that time. Nor had Brovang taken up the standing invitation to either visit Midgard Lodge with guests, or any of Sean Cawson’s other clubs around the world, though he had declined courteously. Sean cancelled out the obscure bad feeling that gave him, with a large annual donation to the children’s charity which Brovang supported and mentioned on his Facebook page. Brovang had never accepted his Friend request.
‘Well, at least he had all the details. He didn’t want to speak to the visitors?’
‘No, he was keen to get going. I said they were asleep. They had nothing to do with it.’
‘Who exactly are they?’
‘Excuse me, sir, I’m not good at names, especially foreign ones. Faces, I never forget. But you can meet them, they’re still at the Lodge.’ He banked the Dauphin over the great crumpled blue-white sweep of a glacier – that stopped short of where Sean’s eye expected it to turn.
He must have misremembered the glacier, it could not have retreated so far in a year and a half. Everything seemed different, but he still trusted Danny Long not just because Kingsmith did, but by his own instinct. He wanted to get things on a good footing again. ‘Danny,’ he said, ‘remember something: Midgard Lodge is my company and I am your CEO. Not Joe. You report to me.’
‘Yes, sir. I know. I made a mistake. I should have informed you first.’ Danny Long’s voice did not change, but Sean remembered Kingsmith telling him that Long held himself to higher standards than anyone else, and took criticism hard.
‘Good, then we’re sorted. How’s everything else?’
‘All good, sir. I was in town a week before the Tata-Tesla retreat, and there were some Russian boys from the new place.’
‘The Pyramiden hotel? Or the one in Barentsburg?’
‘Oh those are long finished, and two more as well. This new one’s called the Arktik Dacha. They were joking with us about it, but in a friendly way. I reckon they’ve had a look at us.’
‘How would they do that?’ Sean’s stomach lurched as they suddenly rose up over the last peaks that pierced the ice cap.
Danny Long grinned. ‘Same way we don’t, at them.’
Although I had joined the Royal Geographical Society some years earlier, under the misapprehension that by so doing I would obtain Sunday tickets for the Zoo, I had only the haziest idea as to what a glacier was. I did not know at what temperature water froze. I had no head for heights, was not used to handling large, fierce dogs, could not row or ski or splice, and knew nothing of the working of an internal-combustion engine, or even a Primus stove.
But none of these considerations sobered my high spirits. I had enlisted for Adventure, and that was all I asked for. I had no responsibilities or misgivings and was as carefree as a kitten.
Sledge: The British Trans-Greenland Expedition 1934 (1935)
Martin Lindsay
6
They landed on the narrow strip of cobbled beach. He saw that the boathouse doors were ajar but all was quiet. The Lodge itself looked better than Sean remembered, the wood more weathered, the structure even more camouflaged. He waited for the bear all-clear signal then went in to greet the mystery guests. The discretion of Midgard Lodge did not extend to its founder and CEO, and absent or not, and no matter how much he delegated to others, he had a right to know who he was hosting.
Two men were waiting in the lobby and jumped up to greet him. The first of Kingsmith’s pals turned out to be the businessman Benoit, from the Central African Republic. He was tall and broad with a winning open smile, and he pumped Sean’s hand warmly.
‘You don’t remember me? I came to all your parties on Spring Street!’ He looked to his companion, a young elegantly dressed Asian man who was also smiling politely. ‘Jiaq, our host gave the best parties in Manhattan, didn’t you?’
‘You’re very kind.’ Sean smiled over his confusion. He had no memory of Benoit, but he had indeed lived in a loft on Spring Street in New York, owned by Kingsmith, in his first year after graduation. Kingsmith had him running errands and apprenticing for him, while he learned what he called ‘housekeeping’. Spring Street marked his first experience of making real money through his mentor’s generous guidance, and he had never looked back.
If Benoit said they’d met, they probably had. Now he looked at him more closely he saw he wasn’t young at all, but something exuberant and vigorous about him gave that impression. The other man, in his early forties, introduced himself simply as Jiaq, from Shanghai. He complimented Sean on Midgard Lodge and apologised for not personally knowing Miss Radiance Young, though he had certainly heard of her.
‘Your men are a credit to you,’ Benoit smiled. ‘We feel very safe!’
‘Excellent. I’m glad it’s all going well for you.’ Only when he politely declined Benoit’s offer to call down ‘the girls’ from upstairs, did they recall the tragic reason for Sean’s visit. Benoit apologised for their own unscheduled one – the result of a chance call to Joe, who suggested that if they were in the neighbourhood …
‘Of Iceland.’ They broke into peals of laughter. They explained they had been showing off their new ice-class yachts to each other, comparing anti-pirate protocols. Now the Arctic was open for business it was good to be prepared, like boy scouts!
Their high spirits grated. Sean said he was very pleased to have them there, and excused himself. Part of him was glad that Midgard was apparently running so well without him, but the larger part resented their presence, and the profane tone of commerce that erased everything else he wanted to feel.
He pulled on waterproofs and went back down to the beach. The Dauphin rested at one end, facing down the fjord in readiness for their return. At the other, Danny Long had pulled one of the smallest Zodiacs from the boathouse, alongside the single kayak Sean had requested. This was his manager’s mute comment on the safety infraction of Sean’s stated intention to go out alone. A breeze glittered the water of the fjord – and carried the faint beat of rock music. He looked around. It came from the building beside the boathouse.
Sean looked at Danny Long in question, then walked towards it. His manager came with him.
‘I’ll tell them to keep it down, sir. But now might be a good time for them to meet you, if you’re happy with that?’ He hurried alongside as Sean pushed through the vestibule doors, then into the barrack room.
Twenty men jumped to attention off their bunks, their eyes down. Sean stared in surprise. No one said anything. He had never seen any of them before, and did not remember there being so many of them on his last trip. But everything about that visit was confused. He would check when he got back.
‘The new detail, Mr Cawson – they’ve only been in a week, but they’re all good.’ Danny Long’s voice changed as he addressed the men. ‘This is your CEO, Mr Cawson.’
The men looked at Sean and saluted. They wore dark clothing and looked very fit.
