Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Finally he circulated the photographs of the Antarctic and Alaskan victims. And then spoke, uninterrupted in a room numbed into silence, for a full thirty minutes, so totally sure of himself that on occasions he had the sensation of listening to himself, aware – and enjoying – his total control. ‘I returned for this meeting today because I believed the proven development of a new influenza outbreak more than reason enough in itself to be discussed,’ he concluded. ‘I’d like to thank the prime minister for allowing everything else to be brought out, particularly and most importantly the ageing illness. I am, as I already told you, returning tomorrow to Washington but I think, with the prime minister’s agreement, I should return at very frequent intervals to keep this Cabinet fully updated, not just medically but politically.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ralph Prendergast, ‘I think so, too.’

  ‘Astonishing!’ declared Lord Ranleigh, who was not given to verbal overstatement, despite a penchant for a dandified Edwardian dress preference always accompanied with a silver filagreed malacca cane rumoured to be a sword stick – which it was once, but the blade had been removed – mutton-chop whiskers and the financial independence to be able to support, with a staff of thirty, one of the few privately occupied castles, complete with ancestral ghost, in England.

  ‘I hadn’t imagined – hardly expected – that the stories would begin to circulate so quickly,’ said Reynell. The servants had been dismissed and there had been no question of Henrietta withdrawing and now the three of them remained around the dinner table, the port decanter available but untouched between them. Neither men was smoking, either.

  ‘In every corridor in Westminster and at every necessary dinner table in London,’ insisted the mottled-faced viscount whose loss of an hereditary seat in the House of Lords in the turn-of-the-millenium reforms had not in the slightest diminished or interrupted his Svengali role within the party.

  ‘What, exactly, are the stories?’ asked Henrietta.

  ‘Just one, in actual fact,’ qualified the older man. ‘That Buxton made an even greater mess of Cabinet than he managed at the Rome summit – largely by trying to convince everyone that Rome wasn’t a disaster – and that in a later discussion with Peter he made himself look an even bigger idiot.’

  ‘But nothing about the subject of that discussion?’ pressed Reynell.

  ‘Precisely what I was coming to,’ smiled Ranleigh, at last reaching for the port. ‘That’s what’s fuelling the story, no one truly knowing what it was all about. Just something to do with a possible epidemic. If we’re going to go on from today – which believe me we are, from all the soundings I’ve got – I need to know chapter and verse about it.’

  Reynell shook his head against the offered decanter. ‘It’s a possible pandemic. Influenza jumping from mammal – whales – to humans. Cabinet agreed to notify the WHO.’

  Ranleigh sat with his port glass suspended before him, waiting. When Reynell didn’t continue he said: ‘What else?’

  ‘Unexplained infections in sea life, most likely caused by global warming.’

  The port remained untasted. ‘And?’

  He knew, Reynell decided. Probably not everything but enough to know there was something else, something more important and therefore, logically, something worse. So this was a test, as he guessed the Carlton Club had been a test to gauge his reaction to setback, but perhaps more importantly to judge Buxton’s response to the prospect of overthrow. Which had been panic, in Rome. But wouldn’t be his, here in London, Reynell determined. ‘There is a potentially serious medical situation. Not, at the moment, a risk of an epidemic or a pandemic but a condition that needs to be identified and resolved. Which is as much as I feel able to tell you, Cabinet having today confirmed the decision that it should remain tightly restricted.’

  Ranleigh snorted, disbelievingly. ‘Peter! I’m talking about your future; a future to the very top, as high as you can get! I can’t persuade people to support me – support you – without knowing what the hell it was you did in Cabinet to convince virtually everyone in the room that Buxton should be got rid of, as soon as possible.’

  Had it been a mistake for Ranleigh to disclose that he had a definite Cabinet majority? Reynell wondered. Or was it a ruse, to get him to offer more in exchange? ‘I know what we’re talking about. Of the influence that you and others are exercising on my behalf. I am sincerely, truly grateful and I want to assure you that I will never forget it or fail any of you. But I feel I would be failing you – as Buxton has so often in the past failed his backers and supporters – by totally abnegating my integrity.’ As you abnegated yours, you manipulative old bastard, leaving me high and dry at the Carlton Club to see how resilient I was.

  ‘Are you seriously refusing to tell me?’ Ranleigh’s incredulity was absolutely genuine.

  ‘I believe that if at this juncture any leaks were to be traced to me or to yourself – and let’s not forget for a moment that as well as being an elder statesman of the party you are inextricably linked with me as my father-in-law – everything we are trying to achieve would be destroyed in an instant.’

  ‘How could that conceivably happen?’ demanded the affronted man.

  ‘Simply by Buxton – or one of Buxton’s people – trying to put his survival ahead of everything else and leaking it all to the media on condition that the information appeared to come from us. It’s your integrity as well as my own that I am protecting, sir. If there were to be a later investigatory tribunal or committee of enquiry – upon which we’ve enough support to insist being established to discover the leak – you could take an oath and truthfully attest that you had no knowledge of what I was doing in Washington. Just as I could honestly testify that I had told no one outside the Cabinet Room and in doing that I had obeyed Buxton’s recorded instructions.’

  Ranleigh’s outrage seeped away. ‘We can’t make our bid while you’re engaged on this. If there’s the potential for success to be achieved, the credit goes to Buxton, the incumbent.’

  ‘I know,’ accepted Reynell.

  ‘Can you overcome that?’

  ‘That I don’t know.’ There was an odd easiness about total honesty.

  ‘Let’s speak daily, Peter.’

  ‘I intend that we will.’

  The aphrodisiac of political intrigue drove Henrietta’s insistence that he share her bed for the second night far beyond invitation, so much so that Reynell only just matched her demand. After her third orgasm she fell back, exhausted, and said: ‘You were totally magnificent tonight. Not here I don’t mean, although you were. With Daddy. You’re going to make a brilliant prime minister.’

  ‘With you at my side,’ said Reynell, dutifully.

  ‘You wouldn’t be in the running if I weren’t, darling.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’ demanded Henry Partington.

  ‘The positive connection with global warming is the most definite conclusion there is,’ said Spencer.

  ‘Then you’re right, Paul,’ agreed the president. ‘We’ve got to move fast with some meaningful, catch-up legislation in the process of enactment if not actually on the statute books. High profile agenda, congressional leaders summoned down from the Hill to show our commitment, all that kind of stuff …’

  ‘Tomorrow too soon, Mr President?’

  ‘Can’t be soon enough,’ said Partington. ‘There’s a lot of buttons to press. And Jack Stoddart: get him on board from the beginning.’

  ‘There’s another potential problem, Mr President. The military don’t think they can keep the bases in Antarctica isolated for much longer.’

  ‘But they’ve got to be, Paul.’

  ‘I know that, Mr President.’

  ‘So find me an answer, just as quickly. Don’t let me down, Paul.’

  Nineteen

  There would have been room enough for four inside one car but a single boot wasn’t large enough for the three separate, sealed containers of refrigerated sample and specimen which the three needed person
ally to deliver to their embassies to duplicate the Fort Detrick experiments in their respective countries. It was not until after Geraldine had packed her collection in the boot of his car that Stoddart realized it might have been better diplomacy for him to have driven Raisa Orlov into Washington, but to have changed over would have drawn unnecessary attention to something he didn’t consider really important. Guy Dupuy insisted he was quite comfortable driving the second car and Stoddart promised he’d make sure they didn’t get separated on the way. Today Geraldine had out-dressed Raisa, in a white skirt and polo-necked sweater under a Ralph Lauren badged blazer.

  Stoddart drove through the Frederick township and as they did so Geraldine said: ‘Doesn’t look like there’s much to explore but it would get us out of the complex for a couple of hours one night.’

  ‘Stir crazy?’

  ‘It’s a little claustrophobic. Don’t seem to notice it until I get outside.’

  ‘Thanks for getting so personally involved. If you hadn’t, we wouldn’t have got as far as we have.’ The repeated autopsies on all the victims had found degeneration in both bones and organs to support Geraldine’s progressive dying theory.

  ‘Raisa’s still not going for it.’ It was a comment, not a complaint.

  ‘You think she’s giving it her full input?’ Dupuy was keeping close enough behind for him to be able to see them both in his rear view mirror. Raisa was staring fixedly ahead. Neither appeared to be talking.

  Still uncritical, Geraldine said: ‘And she had a lot to catch up with here. In between some of the preconceptions last night there was a contribution of sorts. She quite obviously knows her science.’ Geraldine was silent for a moment. ‘There’s something that worries me about last night.’

  ‘What?’ demanded Stoddart.

  Geraldine shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Just a feeling that we missed something. Maybe I’ll pick it up going through the transcript when we get back.’

  Enough shop talk, Stoddart decided. ‘You got anything else to do in Washington apart from seeing your minister and arranging the shipment of all that stuff in the trunk?’

  Geraldine supposed there’d be some tests – samples maybe – as well as an examination by the gynaecologist with whom the embassy doctor had arranged her afternoon appointment. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be, doing that.’

  ‘Neither am I, with Amanda or at the White House. But I thought we’d be through by happy hour. Say five? I’m your ride back to Fort Detrick so we’ve got to meet somewhere.’

  ‘Only on condition you can get the President to do his helicopter bit again,’ she accepted. There still wasn’t any awkwardness between them and she’d enjoyed the rooftop bar and, as he said, they had to meet somewhere. She swivelled, to look briefly through the back window. ‘What about them?’

  ‘You think I should invite them?’

  She picked up the cell phone from the passenger shelf. ‘You want me to call them?’

  ‘That’s my personal phone. They haven’t got one, as far as I’m aware. I certainly don’t have a number.’

  ‘We’ll do it when we stop.’

  Stoddart began to descend the parkway and Geraldine got her first sight of the cathedral and then the needle point of the Washington monument. The Key bridge looked too congested so he continued on to take the Roosevelt, but in his mirror saw a lot of arm-waving from Raisa and the Frenchman turning off, as directed. Stoddart said: ‘I’ve lost them. She’s made him go through Georgetown to get her on to Wisconsin for the Russian embassy. I didn’t imagine Raisa knew Washington that well.’

  ‘You could call them at their embassies.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Stoddart helped her out with the specimen containers at the British legation but still got to Blair House before the arranged meeting time with Amanda O’Connell. She was already waiting.

  She said: ‘Looks as if you’ve lit the fire.’ She was trying to temper her annoyance at Paul Spencer getting to the President ahead of her by subjectively reasoning that the effect of America’s disregard of global warming treaties was beyond her specific remit, but she had immediately acknowledged the need for a warning and resented losing the chance.

  ‘It’s taken long enough,’ said Stoddart. What had he really been summoned for? The final, too long delayed acknowledgement that its inhabitants, led by an emission-fuelling America, were destroying their own planet and possibly themselves with it? Or yet again to play the stooge in a political shell game? Or something else entirely he couldn’t anticipate? Whatever, he wouldn’t be the willing stooge. It wasn’t, particularly, the personal, professional credit he wanted, although the virtually unarguable indications were that he was vindicated. His primary hope was that at last politicians might be frightened into doing more than platform pontificating and agreeing international protocols they ignored before the ink was dry upon the paper. Stoddart admitted to himself for the first time that he’d come close to being overwhelmed by Antarctica, the days (could it still only be little more than days?) that followed and the responsibility – the political, stooge-role responsibility – imposed upon him. Today, this moment, was like waking up from being drunk or drugged. But without a hangover from either, having at last got to the far end of the already realized learning curve.

  There must even have been some physical sign because Amanda said, frowning: ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ dismissed Stoddart. ‘What’s the agenda?’

  ‘The President wants to be proactive rather than reactive.’

  ‘How the hell can he be proactive?’ demanded Stoddart.

  ‘The alchemy of political science,’ said Amanda, matching the cynicism. Was it an impression of Stoddart physically appearing the more positive, assertive person she remembered from television that had caught her curiosity?

  ‘I’m close to being scienced-out, certainly politically.’

  ‘Like the wise man said, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.’

  Paul Spencer and Richard Morgan were already in the Oval Office when they were ushered in and, from the way papers were strewn across the president’s desk, had been there for some time. The Chief of Staff was in shirtsleeves. Spencer avoided Amanda’s look.

  Henry Partington said at once: ‘Congratulations, Jack! You’ve got it right. Which means America’s got it right. That’s good. That’s how I want it.’

  The feel-good, your-president-loves-and-admires-you approach, both aides recognized, settling back in their chairs to enjoy the show. Richard Morgan had read the previous night’s transcript of the scientific group’s discussion and was concentrating more upon his former deputy, who’d put everything planned for that day in motion without advising him in advance.

  ‘It’s the most obvious, logical theory, but still only a theory, Mr President,’ cautioned Stoddart.

  ‘That’s why I wanted to see you personally. I want to be as sure as I can. Which means I need to know how sure you are.’

  ‘The polar melting, and that of the Greenland ice cap, is unarguable. There’s scientific data a foot high. The Antarctic ozone depletion is a scientific fact, too. The checks we’ve put in place at both disaster sites supports it.’

  Partington cleared some papers immediately in front of him, to lean forward on the desk. ‘Global warming’s your baby, Jack. You’ve been crying in the wilderness for years …’

  ‘Not totally unheard,’ said Stoddart.

  Morgan came around abruptly at the interruption. Partington’s face closed but almost at once opened again, although the smile was bleak. Amanda thought, this is the no-shit Don Quixote she’d watched poking his lance into too many cogs of industry.

  Partington said: ‘I hadn’t actually finished speaking, Jack.’ Watch your ass, son.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr President,’ said Stoddart, who wasn’t. He didn’t intend letting any of them, including Amanda, imagine he would roll over as he had about informing relatives of the dead. And that was nagging in his mind too, although there was stil
l something he could do about it.

  ‘As I was saying,’ resumed Partington. ‘Shouting in the wilderness for years with not enough people listening. Now they’re going to and I intend seeing that you’re well and truly heard.’ Here’s your chance, Jack. Hitch your wagon up to mine and there’s no end to where it might lead.

  ‘It’s good to get your support,’ said Stoddart. The son of a bitch was in some way trying to set him up as the stooge. Although he saw the president about to continue Stoddart said: ‘How, exactly, do you intend achieving that, sir?’

  ‘Do what other administrations should have done before me and I’ve been too slow doing myself,’ declared Partington, in rare but safe admission. ‘Appoint you special executive director of the Environmental Agency, reporting and directly responsible to me to ensure the United States takes the effect and seriousness of global warming – particularly gas emission – far beyond the Kyoto agreement. I want all these things that are happening brought to the attention of the public – except one, of course – and to show our commitment stage a conference here in America with a treaty on the table more stringent and binding than that which was agreed in Japan. How’s that grab you, Jack?’

  By the balls, thought Stoddart. There was a lot – almost too much – to assimilate and he couldn’t afford to miss a single thing. The president was using him and his public reputation but then he’d already accepted the man had done that from the beginning. But the situation had escalated, with the involvement of Britain and France through Alaska, the separate outbreak in Russia and the marine life discoveries, one of which at least was leading to an international health warning. Special executive director, reflected Stoddart. Bullshit title for a bullshit job. Partington’s idea of being proactive was to blow enough smoke to blind everyone from seeing he was coming from behind, not already out there in front. Time to blow a little – or maybe more than a little – smoke of his own. ‘It grabs me very well, Mr President. Just as I’m sure the declaration of American leadership will grab the public, not just here at home but abroad …’