by Mattias Berg
So Jesús María took the lead through the steep, unlit passage, the narrow bore allowing us to place our feet on either side of the fall line even here, almost climbing down the rock wall, like Spiderman. I shivered, pulled myself together. By the time we reached the finished tunnel floor, Ingrid had managed to catch us up. We pulled off our balaclavas and continued in double-quick time along the vehicle track which twisted steeply through the bed-rock. The stalactites hung from the roof like age-old objets d’art. According to my watch it took almost a quarter of an hour for us to reach the lock gates, the depth meter showed dizzying and steadily increasing co-ordinates. Negative 500 feet, 650, 800 . . .
Here too the gates conformed to regulations in every way. Three red steel doors, two for the shock waves and one a gas barrier with a pressure relief valve. Ingrid slipped past Jesús María. I leaned out from our little line to see her take a few deep breaths, shut her eyes. Then she quickly pressed the code on the control box hidden in the rock wall, hurried through the decontamination rooms, past the oxygen cylinders, the changing rooms, hardly sparing them a glance. Once we reached the rest area she turned on the light, switched off her lamp and sank into the circular, flame-colored sofas from the ’70s.
I looked again at my watch. 23.03—and the depth, 1,132 feet. Almost a quarter of a mile. Far deeper than any military installation I had visited.
“Welcome to Pluto. Mount Doom’s hidden core,” Ingrid said.
With some effort she removed her boots and put her feet up on the sofa. Wiggled her toes to get the circulation going again as she started to speak.
“We thought of calling it Uranus, after the God of the Heavens. But then we thought Pluto would be better. The direct opposite: the Romans’ equivalent to Hades, the ruler of the underworld, the kingdom of the dead. And the one who gave his name to plutonium.”
Ingrid paused and began to massage her feet. I watched her breath: puffs of human warmth. The temperature was more comfortable here than outdoors, but it hovered barely above freezing. The dank underground cavern felt so familiar to me, mold and high technology, must with a note of electricity.
“We transported a lot of plutonium here, and also uranium, which at the time was collectively known as ‘atomic ash’. Every little trace of our early experiments within the program. And in due course other sorts of things—the residue from our Second and Third Tier development work. Using the same transport route as when we moved the mining engineers and blasting specialists from here in Kiruna to Ursvik, at night-time over a number of years. All those who built the Inner Circle.”
We had learned to interpret all imaginable signs, whatever information was available at any given moment. So when Ingrid broke off in order to take three crunch cookies out of her combat pack and drink three mouthfuls of liquid—which made me and Jesús María do the same thing—she simultaneously gave away the fact that we would not be staying here for very long. A few days at most, hardly a week, since we were consuming so much of our provisions in one go. Then we would in all likelihood return to some sort of civilization, at least for a short while to get real nourishment into our bodies.
“Almost no-one had the faintest idea about any of this,” she went on. “Not even our most senior commanders, politicians, ministers. It was entirely my idea: nobody else should have to take responsibility for this, come Judgment Day. When I was sucked into the program at the beginning of the ’60s—still a teenager, fresh and clear, like a mountain lake—I read Sir Claude Gibbs’ theories on how best to store nuclear waste. According to him, old coal mines, which one should then cement shut, would be safer than the bottom of the North Sea.”
Ingrid finished off her third crunch cookie, for once showing signs of needing food and liquid. Jesús María and I did the same.
“And I had after all recently been sitting in the hut up there and literally felt in my body how the open-cast mining finished and the work penetrated deeper and deeper into the bed-rock. So I thought the atomic ash could slowly but surely be covered by the debris falling down from the higher levels, all this granite and magnetite. If, that is, we were able to blast open a secret connection sideways into the lowest part of the workings: synchronizing our efforts with the work of establishing the new main level at a quarter of a mile down. And everything went to plan. We imagined that this would eventually become a really big storage space for the waste from the program. Not only plutonium and uranium, but also for everything else we would have to hide. For the whole of ‘Lise Meitner’s secret’.”
Her choice of words made me start.
“But the story took another turn, of course, as so often happens. After October 1968, for certain reasons, no more waste was freighted up here. The others involved were all much older than us, began to die off, and there was nothing recorded on paper. So Pluto became as forgotten as Pompeii had been for a thousand years, until the archaeologists started to dig it up. In the end even Sixten stopped coming here once a year to measure the values.”
Ingrid got up and led us through a long tunnel toward the red steel door. On the wall before it were gauges for humidity and the radiation level. They looked as if they had stopped functioning decades earlier.
“It’s lying in there, still: the dragon’s treasure. We began with the waste which already existed—the product of Meitner and Sigvard Eklund’s very first experiments in the mid-’50s, which officially came from experimental reactor R.1 under Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan in Stockholm. Mostly metallic uranium sealed up in aluminum, and unfortunately the aluminum turned out to react on contact with water. Then we simply filled in with what we ourselves produced. Layer upon layer, year after year, in this top secret chamber beneath the gigantic volumes of debris from the construction of the new base level.”
We returned to the rest area and Ingrid stretched out on a sofa while Jesús María and I sat opposite her. Her voice was just as engaging, even in that position. I closed my eyes and listened. Could not help but enjoy her fairy tales.
“And we really did manage to pull it off. It wasn’t until 2007, when Nya Ursvik was to be developed and the last of the radioactive material had to be removed from there, that the so-called ‘historic waste’ began to receive any attention in the Swedish media. Then Greenpeace received a tip-off and had the good fortune to find the truck on the E4 motorway.”
I opened my eyes again, saw that Jesús María was about to say something—and then held back so as to listen to more.
“But the very last of the waste from our Swedish nuclear weapons program was sent away to the States as late as last year, on March 27. Just over six and a half pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, nearly twenty pounds of naturally depleted uranium and a few other things in a top secret maneuver which had been planned for decades. As professional as if I’d done it myself—as indeed I had. But now from the other side of the Atlantic.”
Ingrid seemed to hesitate before she went on. Swallowed heavily.
“In any case . . . with the question of the waste having been raised in the media, in 2007 Sixten came up here for the first time in years to measure the levels: was reminded that everything was still lying in here. And what he discovered was that the situation was not as serious as he had feared—rather it was a good deal worse. The waste from the later phases of the program turned out to be more toxic than we could ever have imagined. In addition, the radioactivity had spread far out into the ground-water.”
Ingrid took another few deep drafts of liquid, cleared her throat.
“Yet we had a stroke of luck. The mine is of course owned by L.K.A.B., which in turn is owned by the Swedish state, so the connection between the nuclear weapons program and the mine could be hushed up. The vital part of Kiruna did have to be moved. But we could also bundle up our nuclear waste issue within the gigantic process which goes under the heading of “City Transformation”.
At last Jesús María reacted.
“You mean all of that crap, Bettan’s fucking tears because the hotel is having t
o close after being run by three generations of the same family, the fact that the town hall has to be blown all to hell, is just fake? That this is about plutonium and shit—and not the iron ore in the mountain!”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Jesús María. I don’t think anyone of woman born can work out exactly what’s what anymore. These processes have for so long been wrapped up in each other, like concentric circles, boxes within boxes.”
Ingrid took a Geiger counter out of her combat pack, our latest model, hardly bigger than a matchbox. It rattled more than ticked. Like a rattlesnake.
“So I promised Sixten to make an assessment of the radiation, since we were in this neck of the woods anyway. And as you can probably tell from your Geiger counter, we ought not to stay in here for long. I should say exactly thirty-nine minutes . . . until he finally comes.”
I stole a glance at my watch, which of course showed 23.21. Thirty-nine minutes until midnight: the constant chronological symbolism. Then I asked the question, even though I knew the mussel might snap shut for ever.
“You talk about your Second and Third Tier development work . . . Can you tell us more about it, Ingrid?”
“The short answer is ‘No’, my treasure, and we haven’t got time for the longer answer. But I can say that our dreams of an atom bomb were only the beginning. The very first circle of hell.”
3.11
When I woke up—and felt to see if the security strap of the briefcase was still lying over my wrist—Jesús María was sitting close to Ingrid on the sofa opposite. The sweetish smell and the stubs on the ’70s oval teak table revealed their tale: Jesús María had already smoked too much. Ingrid looked pale and worn.
“You could set the stars by Sixten, the entire universe, the course of the world . . .” she muttered.
00.51. As it turned 01.00, Ingrid straightened her face, became our Alpha again.
“O.K. Improvisation,” she said tonelessly and lifted her pack onto her back. “It’s not safe to stay here any longer.”
We moved up to the surface in silence. Everything in reverse, although it was much tougher going in this direction: up the steep tunnel, the layers of stones over the hatch. But we were soon above ground and heading into driving snow. By 02.14 we were back at the ramshackle hut.
The night passed relatively painlessly, despite the cold. Our sleeping bags were meant to be able to cope with negative thirteen, according to military regulations—and after burning a fire for about an hour in the open fireplace, the temperature at the hut’s southern gable had risen to approximately that. When I finished my shift keeping an eye on the fire, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, as if drugged.
At 08.30 Ingrid tapped my shoulder. Still pale, resolute, controlled.
“Niklas should be here soon. We said at dawn, whatever that may mean in this weather and on the first day of twenty-four hour darkness. But I didn’t think it was so important to agree an exact time. The plan was for Sixten to take us away from here, by snowmobile, before Niklas returned.”
Half an hour later the dogs and Niklas came into view through the cracked windows. They were at most thirty feet away, the visibility cannot have been much more than that.
“Wonderful night?” Niklas said once he had managed to force open the frozen door and the rolled-up fabric Jesús María had used to seal cracks.
“Divine. Definitely one for the memories,” Ingrid said.
“Yes, it’s been fantastic to experience the northern Scandinavian climate like this, full on,” I said.
Niklas just shook his head as he led us to the dogs. And even their impatient barking had not been enough for me to find them on my own: it was brutally hard to manage the driving snow, despite all our winter training. The special goggles had no chance against these extreme conditions, which seemed to have got heavier rather than moved on.
“And you said Jukkas . . . are you absolutely sure, Inko? You know that I won’t set foot inside that pile of colonial kitsch,” Niklas said somewhere in front of me in the white-out.
“You can drop us off wherever you want within walking distance, Niklas. But Bob and Mercedes would never forgive me if I didn’t give them the chance to stay at the Ice Hotel.”
We took up the same positions in the sled. Niklas and Ingrid back on the runners, Jesús María closest to the dogs and me behind her. Despite the dogs’ silence once they were allowed to start pulling—how willingly they heaved and hauled at the harness, just like me—the wind stopped me from hearing a word of what Niklas and Ingrid were saying. Whatever lies she was telling him now.
The snow covered our tracks, both sled and dogs. The landscape was like one enormous blanket. Some kind of light nevertheless seeped through low on the horizon, the world went from gray-white to white-gray while “dawn” broke and the Polar Night approached its brightest moment.
When the main road was a few feet away—and we were level with yet another wooden church which we could make out on the other side, still in the shelter of the trees—Niklas stopped the sled.
“And you don’t want us to go in there first, Inko? The priest is normally around until lunchtime. Just get it done?”
Ingrid fell silent for a moment, for once had no ready answer.
“Another time,” she said.
“O.K., give me a call when . . . But it should have been us, right?”
Ingrid got out of the sled, put the pack on her back and gave him a quick peck on the cheek.
“Yes, Niklas. It should have been us.”
Then both he and the sled and dogs were swallowed whole by the whirling snow, while we labored toward the Ice Hotel. Even though it was only a regular weekday, just before lunch on Wednesday, December 11, 2013, long lines straggled to the reception desk. Ingrid still managed to find a way to the front—getting hold of the last three tickets to the daily showing.
Edelweiss used to say that there were only two ways in which to hide away effectively. Either in isolation: underground, alone on an island, in the middle of the desert. Or right in the middle of the throng.
It was for that reason that Ingrid and Sixten had chosen this commotion as an alternate meeting place. When the guide arrived, fifteen minutes after the specified time, there was hardly any elbow-room left in the hotel lobby. The tourists were glaring in irritation at our enormous packs that Ingrid had secured, against the odds, permission for us to bring them in.
Even the guide cast a troubled look at the backpacks—before deciding that this group was so large, and he was himself already so late, that it was hardly worthwhile sending us to the left luggage area.
And one would think that in our current situation, nothing else would matter. Just the escape, the briefcase in the hybrid, the assignment. That the rest of our existence would fall away. But instead I was hyper-sensitive, keyed up to the maximum. Every word from our guide registered with me, everything I saw. The Main Hall reminded me of the most beautiful and terrifying stories of my childhood—the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales, Narnia, The Lord of the Rings. And later the Harry Potter stories, which I had read one after the other with the kids.
At the same time I tried to keep an eye on the other two. Ingrid seemed above all to be awaiting the signal from Sixten: usually looking in a different direction from the one the guide was pointing in. Jesús María had already left the group and begun to wander around on her own. When she thought that nobody was looking, she ran her hand over the wishing well of ice in the middle of the hall, furtively dropping a coin into the water.
Then she moved on to the mighty unicorn which dominated the far end of the hall, at least ten feet long from head to tail. When the rest of the group arrived at the sculpture—and Jesús María had already walked some distance away—the guide explained that it was made of snice. A specially balanced mixture of snow and ice for creating frozen works of art.
I came to think of the remarkable Gobelin tapestry which Ingrid devoted one of her many thought-provoking lectures to. One of the most eni
gmatic masterpieces of the Middle Ages, she had said, clicking slowly forward, slide after slide. Through the series which showed in the harshest detail how the unicorn was first lured and then killed. The blood flowing from its wounds, all the spears in one single body, the wild looks of the huntsmen: that beautiful white creature being sacrificed like Christ himself.
After a number of historic twists and turns, the tapestry—seven mysterious pictures in the most precious textiles—ended up at the Cloisters in New York, where my mother and I used to end our long walks.
How we then used to sit in their wonderful café under the arches, my mother with her black coffee and I with an enormous cup of hot chocolate with so much whipped cream so that it spilled over: she always insisted that it should be too much. Spoke to me animatedly about those strange paintings—with their depictions of primitive bloodthirstiness, the white unicorn being hunted and speared like any bull in an arena—ever since I had been far too young.
The final and most complex scene was called “The Unicorn in Captivity”. Which was also the title of this mighty snice statue, here in Jukkasjärvi’s Ice Hotel.
Before the Ice Bar opened, we were allowed to walk around on our own in the hotel rooms and the artistically decorated ice suites, which all had English names for the benefit of the tourists. Everything appeared frightening and incomprehensible to me, put me on edge. In the “Narcissus” suite a gigantic head of ice and snow was reflected in a huge frosty mirror. “Future Ancestors” was a labyrinth of allusions to religious rites which had not yet found their shape.
Then it got really unpleasant. I would not be able to get many minutes of sleep in “Solid Flow/Time Warps”, “It’s Alive” or “Before the Big Bang”. But the worst of all, Suite 325 in the western gable, was called “The Martyrdom of Christ”. Just a double bed—made completely of ice, like everything else—and a gigantic shining crucifix, on which a man-sized Christ figure was writhing in agony.
