Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘Nor are our virologists in England,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘What about Geraldine’s theory of it being a multiple infection, to account for the speed of the infection?’ pressed Dupuy.

  Raisa easily covered her satisfaction at the double admission that the separate viral tests had failed. ‘All we’ve got so far is the one example.’

  ‘How then could it have the multiple effect that is has?’ pressed Dupuy.

  ‘Remember what you’ve just been told,’ Raisa escaped easily. ‘We’re far too far away to understand that yet …’

  ‘Werner’s Syndrome,’ said Geraldine, uttering her thought aloud.

  ‘What?’ asked Raisa, presciently.

  ‘Werner’s Syndrome,’ repeated Geraldine, coming up to Pelham. ‘That’s a condition brought about from an inherited protein deficiency, right?’

  ‘As far as we know,’ agreed the installation director, still obviously hesitant.

  ‘But we do know – the scientific coding is known – of which proteins are lacking?’

  ‘I’d need to check,’ sidestepped the man.

  ‘I’m sure it’s known.’ declared Geraldine. ‘Why don’t we run a comparison – even though we can’t decide what the Russian slide shows – against the acknowledged protein deficiency in people suffering Werner’s Syndrome?’

  It would be a route march in the wrong, uphill direction, Raisa instantly recognized. Which they – Geraldine Rothman most of all – should not for a moment be dissuaded or deflected from following. The problem was the attentive, fart-and-cough-noting secretariat. ‘I’m not sure that it follows,’ she lured, cautiously.

  ‘But you’re not ruling it out as a potential way forward?’ persisted Geraldine.

  ‘At this stage – which isn’t really any stage at all because we know so little – I’m not ruling anything out.’ That didn’t endanger her scientific credentials, Raisa assured herself.

  ‘So why don’t we compare against what there is on the Russian slide, the recognizable – but missing – proteins affecting sufferers of Werner’s Syndrome?’

  There was a moment of silence which Raisa made no move to fill, happy for them to wander off theoretically into the hazy distance. It was the Frenchman who spoke. ‘To achieve what?’

  ‘Werner’s Syndrome is an ageing condition,’ Geraldine reminded, pedantically. ‘If there was anything approaching a match – no matter how indistinct – we could reasonably suggest it was the Werner’s Syndrome proteins being destroyed. Knowing what those missing proteins are, we could re-introduce them into our next victim, hopefully to arrest – even reverse – the condition.’

  Raisa was abruptly glad of the attentive secretariat. ‘Where’s the ethical validity in that?’ she demanded. ‘In Russia we have a medical code against scientifically using human guinea pigs.’

  Geraldine went to speak – her first instinctive reaction to challenge that medical assertion, which she didn’t believe – but for once held herself back. Instead, more tellingly, she said: ‘We tried progesterone on Henri Lebrun, with even less scientifically proven validity. I’m only putting the comparison forward as an idea: throwing stones into the pool to see where the ripples will go. You got a better proposal, I’ll listen and if it is better – halfway better – I’ll go with it.’

  The unexpected opening of the door saved Raisa trying for an answer she didn’t have. And it was to Raisa that Pelham’s personal assistant, a matronly large, grey-haired black woman, spoke. ‘It’s your minister. I said you were in conference but he insisted it was sufficiently urgent for me to interrupt.’

  Stoddart turned the interruption into a formal break and used it to bring forward the encounter with Darryl Matthews and Harold Norris. As they entered the office Norris, a crewcut, arm-tattooed man, remarked that getting out of isolation was like being released from prison, as if he was speaking from personal experience and Matthews said he was probably at the end of a long line but wanted to congratulate Stoddart on his White House declaration.

  ‘Which I’m asking you guys to keep up the momentum for me,’ announced Stoddart. Succinctly, prepared during the drive up from Washington, he set out the offer for them to establish the early administration apparatus of the intended environmental ombudsman’s function, bluntly acknowledging why he in turn had been invited to be part of the previous day’s White House ceremony.

  It was Norris who queried Stoddart’s choice of word. ‘In England an ombudsman is the person you complain to, usually against some official administration.’

  ‘Which is precisely why I used it,’ said Stoddart. ‘Yesterday was photo-opportunity bullshit which I want to turn into something positive—’ He swept his hand around the office. ‘You know what I’m doing – trying to do – here, which is why I can’t set myself up immediately in Washington and why I’m asking you to do it initially in my place. Because if I don’t start moving right away, it’s all going to get shunted quietly into the background, like it always has in the past, the administration having covered its ass against the public eventually learning of the illness you escaped catching …’

  ‘This time I hoped it would be different,’ said Matthews, accepting the cynicism. He was a thin man, made thinner by his ordeal, and his clothes sagged about him.

  ‘This time it’s going to be,’ insisted Stoddart. ‘Like I said, we need to keep the momentum – the public awareness – going all the time. I want all the environmental agencies told we’re bringing them together, under one cohesive, working organization. And I’m not just talking America. The United Nations has an environmental programme, with a staffed division in New York to implement it. With the declared commitment of the US President, the UN won’t be able to get on the bandwagon fast enough. And the UN gives us access, worldwide, to all the other groups … And don’t restrict your spread to environmental groups. It was the President who brought disease into the frame because he wants to appear ahead when the ageing illness becomes known. Involve the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta. And the WHO, who’ve already been warned about the influenza outbreaks. Go to the other international disease control co-ordinators.’

  ‘You’re going to need a bureaucracy as big as the United Nations,’ protested Norris, mildly.

  ‘Maybe not,’ refused Stoddart. ‘We’ve always got that self-proclaimed, all important power of the press. You make the sort of high profile list I’ve suggested and then you invite their participation. And let it be known that they’ve been asked—’ He made rolling motions with his hands. ‘You’re playing the charity game, getting on your letterhead a lot of high-sounding sponsors that don’t really have to do anything. Our only need is to keep the publicity groundswell going so that no one invited to the environmental conference – and remember the responsibility for organizing that is the White House’s, not ours – can back away from the commitment.’

  ‘What about the agenda?’ asked Norris.

  ‘I could write that now, without any input,’ said Stoddart. ‘First we’ve got to publicly back everyone into a corner from which they can’t escape.’

  Matthews’ cynicism remained. ‘Seems you’ve thought a lot through in a short time.’

  ‘I’ve got a lifetime’s experience of government opportunism,’ said Stoddart. ‘Now I’m playing by their rules.’

  ‘You really mean it, about resigning if it doesn’t work?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ guaranteed Stoddart. ‘Which is something you’ve got to understand fully. You agree to do what I’m asking and you’re tarred with the same brush as I am.’ He looked to Norris. ‘Maybe not so much a problem for you, being British. But it might not be a wise career move for either of you. It’s something for both of you to think about, before making a decision. No hard feelings or recriminations if you don’t want to come along.’

  ‘There’s another side to the coin, using the same criteria,’ pointed out the American paleobotanist, sardonically. ‘You achieve something worthwhile – as well as being recogn
ized for correctly establishing how this infection’s getting into the system – and there’ll be a lot of public credit for anyone riding the bandwagon with you.’

  Stoddart smiled, to both of them. ‘That’s the choice you’ve got to make.’

  ‘I haven’t got a better job offer,’ Norris smiled back. ‘My workplace got burned down, remember?’

  ‘I was looking for something to do, too,’ accepted Matthews.

  In her assigned private quarters on the floor below, Raisa Orlov remained standing, rigid, although no longer from the disappointment at not hearing from Gregori Lyalin about what she’d speculated could have even been the man’s recall to Moscow.

  ‘This should not be shared under any circumstances whatsoever!’ she insisted.

  ‘That’s not your decision.’

  ‘I want a ruling from Moscow.’

  ‘I’ve already told you what that is.’

  ‘I want it reversed. To speak to Moscow myself.’

  ‘I am going direct from the embassy here to tell the rest of the group,’ said Lyalin. ‘I am ordering you to do the same with your group.’

  ‘No!’ said Raisa, desperately.

  ‘You will do as I ask,’ said Lyalin, replacing the telephone before she could speak again.

  Peter Reynell hadn’t fully understood Geraldine’s explanation, although he’d assimilated enough generally to brief the others in Blair House, but during the time between their embassy encounter and his arrival at Pennsylvania Avenue he’d evolved a way to turn his difficulty into a continuing advantage. To delay speaking to Simon Buxton in London until the following day – until he’d tested the water with Lord Ranleigh and possibly with the now obvious ally he had in the Foreign Secretary – Reynell admitted at once that some of Geraldine’s explanation had been too scientifically esoteric for him. Geraldine herself had anticipated the need for a simpler clarification and promised to provide it as an addendum to the transcript they would automatically get under the existing discussion exchange between themselves and Fort Detrick. In the interim, he insisted it was an important and positive genetic discovery, talking of telomeres and their erosion although apologizing for being unsure of their function or importance.

  ‘As essential as it is for us to totally understand what the breakthrough is – and what it represents – I propose we wait until we get my scientific advisor’s definitive account, as well as the additional help from all the other experts at Fort Detrick, before alerting our respective governments. We can’t risk the slightest misunderstanding or misconception.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ accepted Amanda, to immediate nods of agreement from the other two men around the table. ‘But it’s clearly some sort of progress—’

  ‘That we’ll only have to wait a few more hours to learn properly,’ finished Reynell, wanting to cut the discussion before there were any second thoughts about a delay.

  ‘There’s something else I want to raise,’ said Gregori Lyalin. ‘Something quite incredible has been happening in eastern, as opposed to northern, Siberia.’

  ‘What we know is very limited,’ said Raisa, tightly, unsure how much more she could restrict what the hairy bastard Lyalin was making her disclose. ‘You’ll remember from an early Blair House transcript my colleague talking about adding the distemper infection in the unique seals of Lake Baikal to the other marine illness outbreaks?’

  Everyone was looking at her expectantly and Raisa wondered if Lyalin had intentionally timed his call to interrupt the Fort Detrick discussion to heighten – as well as forcing her compliance in – the drama of what she was being made to say.

  ‘There’s been something else?’ frowned Stoddart.

  Lyalin would be revealing everything, Raisa accepted. So she couldn’t withhold anything. ‘There is a volcanically active island in the lake.’

  ‘Ol’khon,’ identified Stoddart, at once and unexpectedly.

  Raisa’s look was a combination of curiosity and irritation. ‘There hasn’t been a positive eruption for over a hundred years. In the winter the lake freezes over to such a depth that it becomes a road, capable of supporting heavy vehicles, but sometimes the tremors are sufficient to break apart ice even that thick … that’s how severe they are. There were a series of such tremors three days ago …’ Briefly the final revelation stuck in Raisa’s throat. ‘The permanent research institute at Listvyanka has discovered that what was believed to be a solid cliff face above the permanent freeze line of the Barguzin mountains has sheered off uncovering a cave complex. Inside there is what’s described as a Neolithic colony of perfectly preserved human beings …’

  ‘And?’ anticipated Dupuy.

  ‘The majority died from what appeared to be premature old age,’ completed Raisa. ‘But some very young children died from malnutrition because the adults hadn’t been able to provide food for them …’

  ‘What’s happened now?’ demanded Stoddart.

  ‘On orders from Moscow -’ Raisa stopped short of admitting that they had been issued personally and directly to Listvyanka by Gregori Lyalin, ‘- the area has been sealed and everything has been left, as it was found.’

  ‘We need to go there!’ declared Geraldine, at once.

  ‘I don’t think that will be at all possible,’ rejected Raisa, snatching at the faint chance of keeping it to herself. ‘It’s an extremely remote area, difficult to obtain permission to get into.’

  ‘It wasn’t the last time I was there,’ said Stoddart.

  At that moment, at Blair House, Peter Reynell, his mind yet again far ahead of what he’d also just been told, said: ‘One of us at least has to go there personally.’

  Twenty-Four

  It took less than twenty-four hours to organize because Gregori Lyalin was on the spot instantly to authorize a lot of the arrangements he’d anticipated and stayed up most of the previous night getting into place, and in Washington there was the power of the president to gain unobstructed access to military transportation and whatever specialized material was considered essential. Ironically it was Jack Stoddart, an American, who was the only one of them with personal experience of the unique Russian region, who made up the equipment list – the detail to which took longer than getting an aircraft put on standby – and whom Lyalin asked to give an orientation briefing. Both stoked another layer to Raisa Orlov’s controlled frustration because she’d avoided a lot of initial questioning pleading – honestly – that she had no local knowledge, even though it made her appear lacking. Overnight she’d realized how to turn the entire situation to her benefit though, despite what she now regarded as Lyalin’s opposition.

  The entire Fort Detrick group, including Walter Pelham, despite his not being included in the Siberian party, were at Blair House by seven the following morning. The Blair group was already waiting, with an anxious Paul Spencer hoping for miracles to restore his acceptance by the president.

  It would be wrong, Stoddart decided, to paint a sunset picture, although in fact he recalled the sunsets at Lake Baikal were spectacular. They were, he began, going to a place different from any other they’d ever heard of or imagined. He’d worked there – knew the Limnological Institute of the Siberian Academy of Science at Listvyanka – because its climatic variation, unlike anywhere else on the globe, was one of its several exceptional features. Held as it was – and as large as it was – in the Barguzin mountains, only in the freezing winter was the lake spared hurricane force winds capable of blowing animals and houses – and even more easily people – off cliffsides and shorelines into the water.

  ‘And if an animal or a person drowns, their remains are never recovered,’ Stoddart continued. ‘You know already of the infected nerpa seals, the only species of its type capable of living in the fresh water of the lake. They’re not its sole endemic life form. There’s estimated to be around 1,200 species of mammal and fish and 600 different types of plant found only there. But they are endemic. Nothing from outside the lake can survive in it.’ He stopped, search
ing for a comparison. ‘Nothing can live in the Dead Sea because of the toxicity of its salt content. Nothing – apart from its own evolved species that have adjusted and mutated over millenia – can exist in Lake Baikal because of the intensity of its oxygenization. Which isn’t its only purification. One of the particular lake species is a crab that eats anything – including animal and human bones – alien to the water. The only foreign intrusion that can touch the lake and leave it again are migratory birds.’

  There were shifts around the table, the most obvious from Paul Spencer, although he remained professionally expressionless. It had been the ice tomb discovery that had finally gained him readmission to Henry Partington and briefly he’d thought going to Siberia might continue his desperately needed recovery. The decision to remain the co-ordinator in Washington had been further to avoid political ice entombment but he was fucked if he liked the idea of becoming crab food.

  ‘None of which, I don’t think, is our immediate or even necessary consideration, just a background fill-in,’ Stoddart was saying. ‘There are other things that well might be, though.’ Addressing the politicians, he said: ‘From our transcripts you’ll know some of our discussions at Fort Detrick have revolved around the possibility of a virus or a germ or a bug being unlocked from the ice after a very long time. Just as you know Baikal dates from the Paleocene era. Another of its claims to uniqueness is that Baikal is the deepest continental body of water in the world: at its basin it’s over 1,600 metres or more than a mile deep. Research at the Institute has estimated that under that huge volume of water, possible more than a further mile deep, is sediment which logically has to date back twenty-five million years …’

  ‘You think there could be buried in all that sediment whatever’s caused the illness?’ demanded Reynell. Having thought it through overnight in its entirety – although still to talk to London – he was convinced Siberia was a brilliant political opportunity, as well as a heaven-sent excuse to postpone any discussion with Buxton.