Fast Ice

by Clive Cussler

  “Or a crocodile pond in need of a temperature reduction.”

  “Hard pass on either experience,” Kurt said. He moved to the front, where the lip of the dumping bed extended out over the top of the cab.

  Popping up over the top, he found they were traveling on a dirt road, with wild grasses lining both sides. The main lodge and the maintenance shed were now far behind them. “We’re out in the bush and heading deeper.”

  “Any sign of our guests?” Joe asked.

  Kurt could see the taillights of another vehicle out in front. “That’s got to be them. They’re heading for a small building.”

  Thankfully, the dump truck followed. Heading for the same destination.

  “Probably the reptile house,” Joe said. “Remember the Komodo dragons in Japan?”

  “How could I forget,” Kurt said. “You had so much fun playing in the sand with them.”

  “Once was enough,” Joe said. “I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but we probably shouldn’t be in the truck when it comes to a full stop. Even though they loaded this thing by hand, they’re not going to unload it that way.”

  Joe had a point. Given the opportunity, Kurt would have ridden the truck into the shed and taken his chances, but lights coming on outside of the building and a man positioning a conveyer belt told him the truck wasn’t going inside.

  He left the front of the truck and moved toward the end of the bed. Climbing over the tailgate, he stood on a rusted metal bumper. Fortunately, the big truck wasn’t moving all that fast. “Hit the ground and stay directly behind the truck.”

  Joe gave a thumbs-up.

  Kurt took one last look at the dirt speeding by and leapt into the air.

  He hit the ground, tucked and rolled, tumbling a couple times before coming to a stop in the red dirt.

  Joe landed a few yards away, grunting with the final impact and lying flat in the darkness, as the truck rumbled on toward its destination.

  When it was clear no one had seen them, Joe propped himself up and looked over at Kurt. “I give you eight-point-five on the dismount,” Joe said.

  “I give you a ten for not landing on me,” Kurt replied.

  They watched the truck pull up to the building. It stopped, made a three-point turn and backed toward the loading dock.

  As Joe had predicted, the ice was dumped onto the dock. Two men shoveled it onto a moving conveyor belt, which hauled it up and into the building through an opening at the upper level.

  “That’s our way in,” Kurt said.

  They moved closer, remaining outside the radius of the lights until the unloading was finished and the dump truck drove off. As the last of the ice was loaded on the belt, Ryland’s men moved inside.

  “Looks clear,” Joe said. “Let’s go.”

  They sprinted through the dark toward the conveyor belt. It was wet with meltwater and no longer active, but its rubberized surface made it easy to climb.

  Kurt went up first, climbing up quickly and ducking through the opening. Joe followed a few paces behind.

  Now inside, they found themselves in the rafters where the conveyor split into three separate tracks. Two of them were dry. Kurt followed the trail of water. It led to the far side of the building, where a large hopper made of stainless steel had collected the delivery.

  A metal chute was connected to the far side of the hopper. It was in the upright and locked position at the moment, but there could be no doubt it was designed to empty ice into a long, rectangular pool down below.

  “If someone starts swimming laps,” Joe said, “I’m going to be terribly embarrassed at all the conclusions you jumped to.”

  Kurt pointed to an electronic board at the far end of the pool. It resembled the scoreboard on a playing field or a temporary highway sign telling drivers the ramp up ahead was closed. Glowing digital numbers recorded the time and temperature. The pool water was 32.1 degrees Fahrenheit. “No swimming tonight, unless someone’s training for the Polar Bear Plunge.”

  The sound of voices became audible, accompanied by footsteps on the concrete below. A group of five walked out to a spot on the far side of the pool.

  Ryland, Liang and Novikov were in the lead. A woman whom neither Kurt nor Joe had seen before was with them. A fifth member of the party, one of Ryland’s technicians, followed. He left the group, taking up a position behind a control panel near the lighted information board. He stood with his hands behind him, waiting for orders.

  “No dragons or crocodiles,” Joe said. “But I think we’re about to get a show.”

  21

  Ryland strode around the pool, leading the party to the proper viewing area while fielding questions from his guests. Pointed, accusatory questions. He steeled himself to remain on the offensive, firing back with queries of his own.

  “I’ll start with you, Ms. Tunstall,” he said. “When will the turbines be delivered to my technicians?”

  The woman stared back at him. Eileen Tunstall was the matriarch of a wealthy Canadian family that owned three separate industrial companies. Her father had started them and she’d built them up after wresting control from her brothers. Fighting against the regulators and competitors every step of the way. She was the type who backed down from no one.

  “The turbines have already been shipped,” she said. “But they won’t be delivered until you convince me this scheme is more than a pipe dream. And that you’re more than a second-rate con man.”

  “I assure you,” Ryland said, “I’m second-rate at nothing. As for your demands, will you commit if I meet them?”

  “Yes,” she said plainly. “But at this point the bar is very high.”

  Ryland was fine with that. “And what about the rest of you,” he said. “Are you also committed?”

  “We have demonstrated our commitment many times over,” Liang replied. “Six months ago, I provided this venture with thirty million dollars. That should be enough to prove my intentions.”

  “Thirty million is a drop in the bucket,” Ryland said. “It buys a single oceangoing vessel. And a small one at that.”

  Liang was not impressed. “The thirty million I speak of was only the latest transfer. I have made others beforehand. All told, you’ve received one hundred and fifty million dollars from my company.”

  “And nearly as much from mine,” Novikov chimed in. His deep Russian accent came off as gruff and gravelly, a great contrast to Liang’s sharp, scolding voice.

  “These were not gifts,” Ryland insisted. “They’re investments. Do you think I would include you in this venture without making sure you had skin in the game? There are plenty of others who would choose to be the first movers of the revolution, which I’m about to provide.”

  The Russian cleared his throat. “My company has purchased vast tracts of land above the Arctic Circle. Land for drilling and mining. Not to mention rights of way for pipelines, railbeds and roads. We have optioned the prime coastal areas in which to build the new ports at great expense. We’ve had ‘skin in the game,’ as you call it, for two years now. At this moment, that investment is frozen, literally and figuratively. It’s buried under snow and locked up by permafrost, which sinks ten meters into the earth. It also sits on my balance sheet as a massive liability. One that requires monthly interest payments. You’ve been promising to turn that liability into an asset for some time, but, so far, we’ve seen nothing.”

  “We’ve made similar purchases in Canada and Greenland,” Ms. Tunstall said. “None of us will give you another penny until we verify your claims. You insist you’ve made a breakthrough. Now prove it.”

  “I intend to do just that,” Ryland said calmly. “You see the pool before you. It’s been cooled to a temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. It represents the water above the Arctic Circle.”

  “It’s not frozen,” Liang said.

  “The depths
are not frozen,” Ryland said, “but there is a layer of ice on the surface.”

  Novikov dropped down beside it, dipping his hand in the pool. The ice, clear as glass, cracked with the slightest touch, allowing his hand to sink in.

  Novikov pulled back, annoyed that the cuff of his shirt had been soaked. “It’s as he says,” he announced, while flicking the water from his hand.

  “Surely you don’t expect to convince us by melting a paper-thin layer of ice?” Liang asked.

  Ryland grinned. “Of course not.” He turned to his technician. “Open the slide.”

  The technician manipulated a lever on the control panel, guiding the stainless steel chute out over the pool. At the touch of a button, it tilted downward and the doors of the hopper opened.

  Ice began to pour down the chute, arriving in a rush, splashing and spreading out as it hit the water.

  Tunstall and Liang stepped back to avoid being doused. Novikov got his feet wet and cursed, while the technician moved the chute from side to side, spreading the ice evenly.

  When the last of the ice had fallen, a frozen layer covered the entire pool. In some places, it was jumbled up in small ridges, in others it had frozen together in blocks shaped like miniature icebergs.

  “Five thousand pounds of frozen water,” Ryland said. “If taken to scale, this would represent a shelf of sea ice thirty feet thick—far thicker than what we actually find in either the Arctic or the Antarctic. But I will account for that.”

  Some of the ice had missed the pool. Novikov and Tunstall kicked the chunks back into the water, picking up a few stray cubes and examining them before tossing them in.

  The pool had become a pond with a frozen layer on top. The lighted board showed the overall temperature dropping until it read 26.4 degrees.

  “Now what?” Tunstall asked. “Do we chant the magic words together?”

  Ryland was growing annoyed at her flippancy, but he needed her contributions more than the others at this point. The high-pressure turbines her company built were the key to his plan.

  He turned to his assistant. “Release the catalyst.”

  The technician pressed an illuminated button, holding it down until it turned from red to green. A pair of doors in the side of the pool opened and a dark liquid began pumping into the water beneath the ice.

  The liquid swirled into the pool, twirling out and bending back as it spread.

  “Switch to black light,” Ryland said. “I want them to see this clearly.”

  The technician turned off the regular pool lights and powered up a bank of purple bulbs. Under black light, the ice took on a whiter hue, looking more like the snow-colored sea version than it had before. The pool itself was like a dark glass, but the injections from either side glowed brilliantly in neon green.

  Thirty seconds into the demonstration, the pumps shut down and the doors in the side of the pool closed back up. For several minutes, nothing happened. The guests watched and waited, growing bored and then restless.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Ms. Tunstall said.

  “There had better be more than this,” Liang warned.

  Ryland glanced at his watch. “Give it time,” he said.

  Finally, a crack appeared in one section of the frozen surface. The glowing green liquid rose through the fissure and filled it in, widening the break with each passing second. Additional fissures appeared in other parts of the pool and the ice began to move.

  Ryland’s guests looked closer.

  To their left, a pile of loose ice broke apart and then bobbed to the surface. It quickly separated into a dozen small pieces, which melted rapidly. To the right, a large circular gap opened, spreading quickly in all directions.

  “It’s eating the ice,” Tunstall said.

  “Astounding,” Liang added.

  Ryland stood quietly, reveling in the moment, as the green liquid spread and the ice dissolved before their eyes.

  “As you can see—and feel—the ice is melting despite the temperature remaining below the freezing point,” Ryland said.

  “What is the temperature?” Novikov asked, looking up from the glowing waters.

  “Twenty-six-point-five,” the technician replied.

  The digital board indicated the same.

  “The water has not been warmed?” Tunstall asked.

  “Test it yourself,” Ryland said, “if you don’t believe me.”

  She dipped her hand into the water at the edge of the pool, made a fist as she pulled it from the supercooled liquid.

  Her fingers were bright red. “It is very, very cold.”

  Ryland offered her a towel to dry her hand. “Colder than it was before.”

  “How is that possible?” Novikov asked.

  “The miracle of heat transfer,” Ryland said. “The catalyst absorbs heat from the water while it breaks the bonds between the ice crystals. The colder the water, the faster it works. Up to a point, of course.”

  “And what is the catalyst?” Tunstall asked.

  “It’s a type of microbe, a species of algae that lives under the glaciers,” Ryland explained. “We’ve genetically altered it to be more effective and to reproduce much faster. All we have to do is spread it near the poles and the sea ice will melt away, never to freeze again.”

  “Surely it won’t act this rapidly?” Tunstall said.

  “Of course not,” Ryland replied. “This is a vastly more concentrated demonstration. But over time the algae will multiply and spread. Within a year, the so-called Northwest Passage will be wide open for navigation. Within two years, there will be no summer ice in the Arctic at all. And the increased heat absorbed by the dark water will warm the frozen tundra of Russia and Canada. The two of you, with all of your new real estate holdings, will become the wealthiest landowners in the world, having bought what was worthless only to see it opened for mining, farming and oil exploration in the blink of an eye.”

  He walked around the pool as he spoke. “Ports will be built on the extremities of all northern nations, ships will be needed to carry the new bonanza of trade. Each of you will be in the position of first mover. Each of you will double and triple your wealth and status.”

  “And you?” Tunstall asked. “What do you get out of all this?”

  “A portion of the wealth you generate will flow to me,” Ryland said proudly. “I’m invested in each of your companies at this point, am I not?”

  “You are a minority investor,” Liang reminded him. “A very minor one at that. A long list of others will make much more. Now that I see what you can do, I’m surprised you’ve demanded so little.”

  “I have other incentives,” Ryland insisted.

  Novikov laughed deeply. He turned to his associates. “He’s working a different game. With a kingdom of his own there for the taking. Isn’t that right?”

  Ryland offered a slight bow, as if to say, You have me.

  Novikov continued, “We have the north between us. He has the south alone.”

  The Russian turned to Ryland, a smile on his face suggesting he felt a great deal of pride for having figured Ryland out. “The Antarctic will be yours. Isn’t that the way you see it?”

  “The oil is there,” Ryland said, sounding much as he had when speaking to Kurt. “Oil, minerals, gemstones. All the diamonds that used to be so plentiful here in South Africa. With the ice gone, we’ll walk around and pluck them off the surface, find them in every shovelful of soil. Not to mention rare earths and precious metals, like platinum, gold and tungsten. That is my desire, yes.”

  Ms. Tunstall laughed. “They will never let you have it,” she insisted. “They will never let you mar their pristine little paradise.”

  Ryland offered a shrug. “When we’re finished, Antarctica will be a gray and barren land. What little animal life exists today will quickly die off. With
no wildlife or ‘pristine’ snowscapes to protect and nothing but broken-down glaciers retreating by the day, they will quit caring what happens to it. Mark my words, the prevailing wisdom will change as soon as dollar signs appear.”

  The look on Tunstall’s face said she doubted him, but she shrugged instead. Her tracts in northern Canada would be worth billions. “I trust you have scientific proof to back up what you’ve shown us?”

  “A data transfer is being sent to each of you as we speak,” Ryland said. “It’s twenty gigabytes of genetic information, climate studies and thermodynamic data. I’m sure each of you have people to summarize it for you.”

  Novikov nodded. “So be it,” he said. “You will have the last transfer of funds.”

  “And your turbines,” Ms. Tunstall added.

  “And your tankers for transporting the catalyst,” Liang insisted.

  Ryland nodded to each of them in gratitude, then stood tall and proud. “And each of us will have our own end of the Earth.”

  22

  From his spot up in the rafters, Kurt listened intently. He kept his breathing shallow and steady and his body completely still.

  By the sounds of it, Ryland hadn’t given up on his fantasy. Instead, he’d found a way to remove the snow and ice that made it so difficult to get at.

  Down below, Novikov found a chunk of ice on the pool deck. He kicked it back into the water. It bobbed up and down before breaking in half and shrinking away like the rest of the ice had.

  After staring at this last chunk for a moment, Ryland motioned to his technician. “Drain the pool.”

  The technician opened several valves and a pair of circular grates appeared in the bottom of the pool. The water began to flow out, pouring through the drains so quickly that small whirlpools could be seen extending down from the surface into the opening.

  As it swirled away to an unknown end, Ryland gathered up his guests, led them out of the pool house and back toward the waiting Mercedes.

  “We need to get a sample of that algae,” Kurt said.