by Mark Aitken
‘Over here,’ called Winter, beckoning.
Walking to the group, Gallen looked down and saw a dead man: Anglo, balding, with a tattoo on his forearm that Gallen had just recently discovered was for the US Army nuclear reactor officers.
‘Negroponte,’ said Winter, spitting. ‘The fuck’s he doin’ in the emergency lock?’ Kneeling, he checked the dead man’s mouth, neck and eyes. ‘Strangled,’ he said.
‘Killed in the power station, dragged to the emergency lock,’ said Gallen.
‘Yep,’ said Winter. ‘So who’s in the power station now? Who’s holding the key to that thing?’
Standing, Gallen gulped at the fresh air sluicing in off the Beaufort like the best drug. ‘Let’s find out.’
On the deck of the service ship, they found Tucker and Ford keeping Du Bois company. Aaron had his pistol held to Du Bois’ kidneys and then he was pushing her along the deck, back to the state rooms.
‘Aaron,’ said Gallen, seeing a raised eyebrow from Winter as he walked past. ‘What’s up? I need to talk to her.’
‘So do I, Gerry. This is no longer Oasis business.’
‘What?’ said Gallen, surprised.
Aaron kept walking. ‘Join us if you want.’
Two men in Ariadne jumpsuits peeled off and joined Aaron, who steered Du Bois through the companionways and passages, into his state room, where he threw her on the bed. From his briefcase he pulled a digital recorder and flicked it on, slamming it on the small writing desk.
‘Martina Du Bois, of ArcticWatch, my name is Aaron Michaels, I’m an agent of the US Government. I need to ask you some questions and anything you say will be recorded and used in any way deemed fit by the government.’
‘Fuck you,’ said the Frenchwoman, struggling against one of Aaron’s undercover heavies.
‘Who are you working with?’ said Aaron, as though she hadn’t said a word.
Du Bois spat at Aaron, kicked one of her captors. Grabbing the recorder, she threw it at a mirror, smashing both items.
‘This isn’t a joke, Martina,’ said Aaron, wiping off the spit as the heavies got their hands on her again.
‘Who are you, anyway?’ said Du Bois.
‘It’s best if I ask the questions,’ said Aaron, and Gallen knew he’d lost the battle.
‘Aaron, can we talk?’ he said, inclining his head to the door.
Outside, Gallen immediately started in. ‘What the fuck, Aaron? I asked if you were Agency.’
‘And I said no, which is the truth. You’re ruining my interrogation.’
‘You ruined it yourself as soon as you went with the Gestapo line.’
Aaron rocked back on his heels, pushing his hair back. ‘Shit, Gerry. This has been a long, hard road.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘An agency that monitors illegal use of nuclear technology.’
‘Shit, you’re DIA?’
‘No,’ said Aaron. ‘We work with them a lot. But this is separate.’
‘That leaves NSA.’
‘No comment, Gerry. We’ve been chasing Mendes for years.’
‘Years?’ said Gallen, aghast. ‘She only made CEO two weeks ago.’
‘She was planted at Oasis, groomed up,’ said Aaron. ‘Shit, I’m saying too much.’
‘Say more,’ said Gallen, nostrils flaring with annoyance.
‘Harry was going to die in a hunting accident in Russia, but another hit team got to his plane first and almost took Florita Mendes and the rest of you with it.’
‘Planted?’ said Gallen, stunned. ‘By whom? Why?’
‘Does it matter? Right now we have a team of terrorists on the sea bed with a nuclear device.’
‘You tell me why it matters,’ said Gallen, ‘and I’ll work on Martina for you, if you ask me nice.’
Aaron sighed, shook his head. ‘Florita Mendes works for the Bashoff crime family in a sleeper capacity. The STARs she’s been pushing for in the underwater rigs? They’re a Russian design, produced by a Bashoff company. The Oasis takeover of Thor is illusory. It was a reverse takeover orchestrated by the Bashoff bankers and Florita herself.’
~ * ~
‘It can go two ways, Martina,’ said Gallen, lighting a smoke when he was back in the state room and half recovered from the conversation with Aaron.
‘You talk in clichés, you Americans.’
Gallen ignored her, cracked a porthole for his smoke. ‘You’ve killed an American sea captain and a former US Army officer, who happens to have been a nuclear reactor officer.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone,’ snapped the Frenchwoman.
‘The CIA might overlook that detail and go straight to the part about nuclear terror. If the Pentagon’s spooks get to you first, you’ll be rendered to a basement in Egypt where they can have a long chat with you—see who else is planning nuclear attacks against the United States.’
‘I’m a French citizen,’ she snarled. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Try me,’ said Gallen, exhaling smoke. ‘There are few things less humorous to Washington than a bunch of unfriendlies playing rock-paper-scissors with nukes.’
A knock sounded at the stateroom door and Ben Letour entered.
‘I know nothing about this,’ said Du Bois, ‘except what I told you. I didn’t know they were Mossad. I still don’t know that.’
‘Maybe,’ said Gallen. ‘But there’s a whole layer of intelligence bureaucracy devoted to finding people like you and extracting every ounce of information. It’s called the Greater Good theory, Martina— you know what that is ? ‘
‘I know what civilised Europeans think it is.’
Gallen smiled. ‘Let me give you the Pentagon’s version of Greater Good: violating the human rights of one Frenchwoman is okay if in doing so you can save an American city from a nuclear strike.’
Du Bois looked away, chewed her lip.
‘It won’t matter that you’re French or that you’re charming, Martina,’ said Gallen, keeping on the pressure. ‘I worked with these people in the Ghan and they don’t ever laugh. They’ll take one look at you and see someone who values her looks as the core of her very identity, and as soon as—’
‘Okay, okay,’ she spat. ‘I get it.’
Gallen sat in front of her. ‘Here’s the deal. You talk to me informally, and I can vouch for you later. You get cute and I feed you to Aaron, who’s got a Learjet waiting at Kugaaruk.’
Du Bois gulped. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you.’
‘What are they doing down there?’
‘Filming,’ she said, shrugging.
‘The one you call Raffa is actually Ari—former IDF Navy commando and Mossad operator: he’s down there with a nuke. The person you know as Josh is a Mossad lifer: his real name’s Marc and he’s dead.’
She looked at her feet.
‘The third one, the slightly older one,’ said Gallen.
‘Gregor?’ said Du Bois.
‘What was his relationship with Luc and Raffa?’
‘In the background more,’ she said. ‘What can I say?’
‘Well how about this: the two tough guys are Mossad agents who do this sort of thing for a living. What about Gregor? He’s not a sound guy. What do you think he is?’
‘In real life?’
Gallen nodded, flicking his butt through the porthole.
‘Do I get amnesty?’
‘This ain’t CSI Arctic Circle, Martina,’ said Gallen, grabbing her by the shoulders. ‘Focus. What role does Gregor play in this crew?’
She looked away and Gallen felt her relaxing in his hands. ‘Okay, there was one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Before we went under the water, Gregor was talking to one of the senior guys on the Ariadne and he came back to the others.’
‘He know you were listening?’
‘No,’ said Du Bois. ‘He said to Josh something like, The well heads are not a problem, and The caissons are a good fit. That make any sense?’
‘
Letour,’ said Gallen, breaking away from Du Bois. ‘What’s a caisson?’
‘It’s a big circular hole in the ground.’
‘On the bottom?’
‘Yes,’ said Letour. ‘Where else?’
‘How big is it?’
Letour made a face. ‘About thirty feet across, one hundred deep—we build them to house and stabilise the well head. The well bore isn’t anywhere near that size, but the caisson ends up encasing all of the flow-backs and equalisers and emergency valving. On the top of it all sits the BOP.’
‘Which is?’
‘It’s the blow-out preventer. When it malfunctions you get a disaster, like the BP well in the Gulf that blew up in 2010.’
‘Some of the well heads aren’t finished, right?’ said Gallen. ‘So the caisson is open?’
‘To the sea, yeah,’ said Letour, confused. ‘But at the bottom of the caisson—about one hundred feet down—the well is capped. It’s not running yet. Where is this going?’
‘How wide is the power station?’ said Gallen, pulse rising.
Letour’s eyes widened and when he spoke it was dream-like. ‘About twenty-five feet across.’
They stared at each other.
‘I’ll need that last submersible, and someone who knows oil drilling,’ said Gallen.
‘You don’t think . . . ?’ said Letour, then he stopped himself. ‘Oh shit.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 64
The Fanny Blankes-Koen’s secondary crane swung the submersible to the inside of the starboard hull, having retrieved it from the holds. It was yellow with black markings—like a school bus—and looked old, maybe 1960s.
Pulling on his thermals and padded coveralls, Gallen looked at it and tried to shake loose any phobias. They were going more than a thousand feet down, where there was no light and no escape if things went wrong. It was like going to the moon.
‘What’s that?’ he said to Master Hansen, pointing at the sign on the side of the sub. ‘Sea Otter?’
‘It’s an old design,’ said the Swede. ‘But reliable. It’s good for four hours.’
‘You got nothing modern?’ said Gallen, as the technicians did their checks and beckoned him over to the submersible.
‘The mechanical arm on the front is the latest design from a team at CalTech—about three times stronger and more articulate than the models it surpasses.’
Aaron walked out of the gear room in his padded coveralls. ‘There’s really nothing I can do down there, Gerry,’ said the spook. ‘If it were up to me—’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Gallen. ‘Get in the can.’
Aaron shook his head and took the hand of a technician as he stretched his leg onto the submersible.
‘We got a skipper?’ said Gallen, turning back to Hansen.
The master smiled. ‘I’ll be your chauffeur, sir,’ he said, with a bad Swedish attempt at an English accent.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Gallen. ‘I haven’t been totally honest with you about what’s down there.’
‘There’s a nuclear reactor loose on the Arctic floor,’ said Hansen, his eyebrow rising. ‘You saying there’s more?’
‘Like I said,’ said Gallen, ‘you can sit this one out.’
But Hansen had already taken a technician’s hand and was clambering into the yellow tin can.
~ * ~
The sub was cramped and noisy. After ten minutes of their descent, Hansen at the tiller, Gallen had given up panicking at every groan and graunch that emanated from the machine.
‘It’ll take us about twenty minutes to get down there,’ said Hansen, seeing the looks on the faces of his passengers. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
The ceiling almost touched their heads and their knees came up to their chests. Around them were dials and switches packed tightly, and other than the groans and squeals of the sub, the predominant noise was of the whining electrical motors, the small fans in each corner and the faint hiss of air being released into the coffin-like capsule.
Gallen had once totally freaked out his female neighbour, Daisy Antrim, by locking her in the trunk of his mother’s Impala. He hadn’t known she was badly claustrophobic until he let her out half an hour later and found she’d gnawed at her own forearms with the panic of it all.
He looked around now and saw an environment that would cause Daisy to tear out her own teeth: they were strapped inside a tiny tin can, dropping to the ocean floor through a sea so black that the massive light beams on the front of the vessel were eaten up in the abyss before reaching more than sixty feet. Everything seemed to press in, the water pressure exerting itself on the rivets and welds.
‘So,’ said the Swede, as they descended at a forty-five-degree tilt in a series of downward spirals, ‘you were going to tell me what else is down there, besides a nuclear reactor.’
Gallen caught a look from Aaron. ‘I’m fairly sure the people who hijacked the Ariadne and released the emergency bolts on the reactor are Mossad.’
‘The Israeli spies?’ said Hansen, as if he were asking about flying pigs. ‘Here? In the Arctic? But why?’
Gallen realised how silly it sounded. ‘I can’t tell you why just yet. I know there were three of them—now two: a Mossad officer and someone who I’m assuming is the scientist or the technician.’
‘Nuclear technician,’ said Aaron, as if Hansen hadn’t worked it out.
‘Will they make a bomb?’ said Hansen, wide-eyed. ‘Or just poison the sea?’
Gallen shook his head, craving a smoke. ‘Judging by something Du Bois overheard, I think they’re going to drop the reactor in one of the caissons.’
‘The what?’ said Hansen. ‘The caissons?’
‘That’s what Du Bois heard the scientist guy saying to the others,’ said Gallen. ‘But we should ask Mr G-Man here.’
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Aaron, whose forehead shone like that of a man in the middle of an anxiety episode.
‘You don’t have an opinion on that?’ said Gallen, fed up with the secret squirrel act.
‘I have an opinion on how easily these STARs can be reversed into meltdown,’ said Aaron, squirming as they spiralled downwards. ‘These Russian transportable reactors can only be made so small because of their plutonium cores.’
‘Plutonium, as in the warhead material?’ said Gallen.
Aaron nodded. ‘The danger isn’t that you can turn it into a bomb in half an hour. You can’t.’
‘So what then?’ said the Swede.
‘If you can short-circuit the fail-safes, you can put them into meltdown.’
‘Can we use English?’ said Gallen.
‘Ever see that movie The China Syndrome?’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen, searching Aaron’s eyes for clues. ‘The reactor’s cooling system failed and the thing just melts through the floor.’
‘Basically, yes. The plutonium cores feature immense fission activity and so they run at extremely high temperatures unless they’re inhibited and cooled,’ said Aaron. ‘You retard the temperatures with graphite and water and they tick over for a decade at a time before the rods need replacing. They produce steam that drives turbines for power.’
‘And if you fail to retard the fission?’ said Hansen.
‘Like they said in the movie, the rods rise to the temperature of the sun and they simply follow gravity through everything in their path.’
‘And we let the Ruskies build these things?’ said Gallen.
Aaron shrugged. ‘The Russians were using STARs in the Arctic Circle since the 1970s, mainly for remote communities and drilling operations. We had nuclear power in McMurdo, in Antarctica. But those old Russian STARs were uranium-powered; they were stable and were quite large units mounted on barges.’
‘Where did the plutonium come in?’ said Gallen.
‘More energy from a smaller unit,’ said Aaron. ‘The developers decided there was a large market for a nuclear power station you could carry on the back of a Dodge Ram. Florita had the perfect test b
ed for them—a sea-bed drilling rig, for Christ’s sake.’