Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Spencer, who’d arranged this ceremony as he’d set up the McMurdo greeting to exclude Richard Morgan, proudly said: ‘What about this? A presidential welcome!’

  Geraldine said: ‘We asked for refrigerated transportation.’

  ‘You got it!’ assured Boddington. ‘Nothing’s been overlooked.’

  ‘You won’t need me out there,’ said Geraldine. ‘I want to supervise the transfer.’

  ‘I think we do need you,’ corrected Reynell, delighted by the preparations.

  Geraldine had worked with Stoddart since three that morning organizing the specimen and body collection and flown still wearing the repellent-stained and crumpled jeans and ski-jacket she’d worn every day. Abruptly she realized the unshaven, unkempt Reynell and the tousle-haired Amanda O’Connell, without make-up, were in what they’d worn for every visit to the Neolithic colony, too. Oddly, both appeared dirtier and more wrinkled than hers. The creases in Guy Dupuy’s formal suit seemed to match everyone else’s dishevelment.

  The Secret Service man cocked his head and said: ‘They’re wondering out there how it’s going.’

  Boddington said: ‘We thought you’d like to transfer what you’ve brought back first,’ turning at the arrival of an army squad in cowled safety suits identical to those they had worn to go into the caves, although these were camouflaged.

  ‘Everything’s packed in what the Russians developed to protect against radiation leaks during highly toxic nuclear movement,’ sighed Stoddart. ‘All that’s needed is the refrigeration.’

  Boddington said: ‘They’re suited up now. No point in wasting time, undressing.’

  ‘Or spoiling the picture,’ commented Stoddart.

  ‘Jack!’ soothed Spencer. ‘You’ve got to be exhausted. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like here, particularly after the photographs those local guys took inside the caves. Everything we’re doing is to maintain calm: reassure people we’ve got a handle on things. Let’s all stay on the same side, OK?’

  ‘Who said we’ve got a handle on things?’ demanded Geraldine, at once.

  ‘You found the telomere fraying, didn’t you?’ said Reynell.

  Geraldine regarded the man steadily for several long moments. ‘You talked about that as a cure? How to control it?’

  ‘I referred to it as progress,’ insisted Reynell. ‘I don’t know how it was interpreted.’

  The leader of the protected handlers shifted, impatiently. Without speaking further Geraldine led the American soldiers to the sealed-off rear of the plane, to a frowned and sniggered reception from the waiting, cotton-overalled Russians. It wasn’t until she was returning after the second necessary trip that Geraldine acknowledged that dressed as she was she’d made the photo-staged precautions look ridiculous. Boddington didn’t appear to have noticed.

  ‘Ready?’ urged Spencer and as they moved the Secret Service man mumbled into his microphone that they were on their way.

  They disembarked abreast, Amanda beside Reynell, Stoddart with Geraldine and Dupuy shambling by himself at the rear. As they stepped on to the tarmac, Partington began to clap loudly, prompting applause from airport onlookers. He pulled the five of them up on to the podium with individual handshakes and Buchemin broke ranks to embrace Dupuy.

  Partington launched into a word perfect eulogy about bravery and heroes and selflessness and horrific legacies from the beginning of time. Having proved his own bravery by standing in the Alaskan cold, he led them into the largest but barely adequate lounge of the airport, where more cameras and lights were already rigged and a dais had been assembled for a table and strictly rationed seating for the international press conference. There was an enviromentally green backcloth and green-leafed potted plants at either end.

  Initially few of the questions substantially varied from those they’d already answered by telephone over the preceding two days and Geraldine found herself concentrating more upon Reynell’s orchestration of the event than upon its content. It would have been impossible, later, to have accused the man of superseding the pontificating American president (‘I can confirm it was I who named the disease the Shangri-La Strain: Shangri-La existed in a lost continent, didn’t it?’) but there was rarely an answer to which Reynell didn’t make a contribution. Although the preceding day’s worldwide use of what the local Irkutsk photographers had taken had been phenomenal – whole editions given over entirely in at least twelve countries – it was Reynell who dominated the verbal description, although deferring to Amanda for confirmation and elaboration. Reynell’s account of the pothole search for Vadim Ivanovich Karelin was vivid enough to imagine it had been Reynell who had been lowered into the unknown, unexplored blackness instead of the Russians. Amanda O’Connell came close to matching him with her tight-voiced drama of coming to within inches of an unseen, gaping hole as she made her way through the galleries, describing the never before seen images of the cave-painted monsters as if they still might have been lurking somewhere in the boreholes. It was Amanda who suggested some of the depictions were of dinosaur birds.

  It was a full half hour before either Stoddart or Geraldine were drawn into any prolonged discussion, Geraldine actually introduced by Reynell as the person (‘a scientist of near genius’) who had made the genetic connection. Reynell came in at once, to smother Geraldine’s quick correction that it hadn’t been her personal finding and that it didn’t take them any further towards a cause or a cure, by insisting she publicly confirm that the prehistoric Siberian bodies had definitely died from the same illness.

  ‘That would seem to be so, from the external examination that I’ve been able to carry out so far,’ Geraldine had to agree. ‘There’s an enormous amount of pathology still to be conducted but I believe Siberia could show us the direction in which to go.’

  So specific were some of the demands, that Geraldine accepted there were specialist medical correspondents among her questioners who were able to ask and understand telomere shortening. To isolated nods of understanding from the packed room, Geraldine said: ‘It’s a recognized manifestation in old age, not its cause.’ There was a long exchange about contagion, Geraldine needing to repeat several times that they did not yet know how the infection was transmitted. Although a comparison with AIDS had been made, the illness they were investigating was certainly not sexually passed on.

  Encouraged by Amanda and Reynell’s account of the Neolithic colony, the concentration was very clearly upon the lost world environment of Lake Baikal, which Stoddart strived to keep factual and in scientific perspective, but his mentioning that anything alien to the lake could not survive in it caused an immediate flurry of overlapping questions, almost at once repeated when he talked of a mile thick sludge of primeval sediment at its bottom. Pointing out that he lacked any medical competence, Stoddart agreed that outwardly the Siberian dead appeared to have died from the same illness that killed the Antarctic rescue group of which he was the only survivor and that it confirmed that the global warming depletion of the north and south ice sheets were somehow releasing a disease unknown since the pre-dawn of civilisation. While the medical and scientific research continued at Fort Detrick he intended taking up more fully the responsibilities entrusted to him by the president to ensure the environmental agencies, under the aegis of the United Nations, were co-ordinating with the necessary urgency.

  Boddington’s first attempt to end the conference was howled down, but after a further thirty minutes he succeeded on the second attempt. There were instant demands for individual interviews from every television crew, all of which were refused with the exception of Guy Dupuy who compensated for making the smallest contribution to the main encounter – responding in French to just five questions from the French contingent – by giving three separate personalized interviews, each in his own language.

  As they were escorted from the room, leaving Dupuy briefly behind, Geraldine said: ‘I wonder how brave he’s sounding, now that it’s all over?’

  Only when they were bei
ng led by Partington towards the presidential plane did they see the Secretary of State escorting the ambassadors separately to Air Force Two parked well out of camera shot. Aboard, Partington at once adopted the role of genial magnanimous host. ‘This is the White House with wings,’ he said, encompassing with an arm wave the expansive mid-section lounge, complete with sink-in leather easy chairs and sofas, a steward-attended bar, television and telephones. ‘Whatever you want, we’ve got.’

  ‘How about a shower?’ challenged Geraldine.

  ‘For’ard, next to the sleeping quarters,’ defeated the small man.

  ‘With enough sweatsuits for everyone,’ completed Spencer. ‘Figured you might like to freshen up on the way east.’

  ‘Plenty of time before dinner,’ assured Partington. ‘Thought you’d appreciate some good old Texas steak.’

  Geraldine had actually showered – embarrassed by the scum that took a lot of hosing to disperse – and put on a lounging suit before the plane took off. There was no insistence upon safety belts and indulging herself with the technological luxury, like a child with a new toy, Geraldine asked for Walter Pelham’s direct line at Fort Detrick and was instantly connected on the telephone beside her armchair.

  ‘Everything we brought back left Anchorage an hour ago,’ she said, relaying Spencer’s information.

  ‘I’ve already been advised by Andrews. It’s being helicoptered here.’

  ‘Anything new from your end?’

  ‘There’s a common difference in how people are dying now from how those died in the ice stations,’ said the man. ‘I think it’s significant. And there’s something else …’

  Raisa Orlov’s satisfaction at finally being left professionally alone lasted only a few short hours. She’d also gone to the site at three that morning, to monitor – and later to duplicate – everything taken for Fort Detrick examination. Afterwards she remained with Lyudmilla Vlasov supervising the removal and refrigerated storage of the remaining forty-six bodies. The immediate transfer, to two waiting transport aircraft, was completed by mid-afternoon. Leaving Vladimir Bobin and specialists from the institute staff to finish the packing of what remained, the two women arrived back at the hotel coincidently just as the Alaskan press conference was being transmitted, live, into the packed lounge of the Grand Hotel. Raisa, who was recognized at once, shook her head against the offer to go closer to the television. Instead she remained statued just inside the door, not needing the voice-over translation, seething at the posturing of Amanda and Reynell, snorting in contempt at the word genius and sneering at the artifice of their filthy work clothes, and grew even angrier at what she saw and believed others would see as Geraldine’s confirmation that the cause and cure would be found by Britain and America.

  Because no one had bothered beyond trying to delay it, the media invasion had always been expected from the northwest, from the massed ranks in Moscow, but it actually came – although still in force – in a squadron of chartered planes from a closer and more convenient Japan. Raisa was lying, still stiff and unresponsive, beside a sympathetically comforting Lyudmilla when the first telephone call came from the lobby below.

  Raisa went down wearing her stained and soiled outfit and was happily engulfed. She had to arrange her own conference but was commanding enough to do it, actually in the same lounge in which she’d so recently watched the more orderly affair from Anchorage, consciously using what she’d seen and heard from there as a rehearsal to stage manage her own solo performance. She was content for everything to appear disorganized, because it suited her intention, letting the pre-history questions ramble so that she could establish doubt at the bodies positively being Neolithic. When the discussion became medical she implied the British telomere findings had been made virtually in parallel with Russian research before, carefully timing her moment, she declared: ‘As head of the Russian scientific research I am confident – in fact I think I can promise – that I am on the point of making the medical breakthrough we’re looking for.’

  Raisa picked her way through the deluge of questions, coming close to confirming that she was indicating a cause and implying that from it would emerge a cure. Carefully waiting for the question to come from an American reporter, she said that of course the research was being conducted jointly, although as she was returning to Moscow, not Maryland, and would have been out of contact for almost a week by the time she got there, she’d need a period to bring herself up to date with the latest from her Moscow team.

  Raisa was concluding her third personal interview with an NBC correspondent when Vladimir Lyalin finally returned from the airstrip where he’d been officially accepting signed responsibility for what was being shipped to Moscow. She at once identified him as the minister with the authority to allow protectively suited entry into the caves and as she was escorting him to where she’d initially sat, for the conference to resume, Lyalin demanded, soft voiced: ‘What have you said?’

  ‘Only what I believe to be true: that the breakthrough’s going to come from us, in Moscow.’

  Under questioning, the unprepared Lyalin tried to avoid confirming Raisa’s statement by insisting upon the need for consultation – which unfortunately from what Raisa had said earlier appeared to be confirmation – and even more adamantly denied the abruptly voiced suspicion that his going back to Moscow as well as Raisa indicated a breakdown in the international co-operation.

  He also categorically refused to let anyone near the caves, protected or otherwise. Anyone who tried would be arrested and, in the unlikely event of anyone getting past the military cordon, risked becoming infected and dying.

  Much later, lying in the darkness in the crook of Raisa’s arm, Lyudmilla said: ‘You were magnificent. At the conference and later, standing up to the minister like that.’

  ‘Lyalin’s a fool,’ dismissed Raisa. She’d avoided the man’s closed-door demands to explain her remark by insisting that her own laboratory’s research since she’d been away needed to be co-ordinated with that of Fort Detrick and put against what she was already sure she’d find from the cave victims, carefully quoting herself that she was on the point of, not that she’d actually made the breakthrough.

  ‘You’re certainly not,’ flattered Lyudmilla.

  ‘I want to go through the anthropology once more,’ said Raisa. ‘The Neanderthal, which preceded the Neolithic, was the origin of man?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lyudmilla.

  ‘And the Neanderthal completely died out, as a species?’

  ‘Yes,’ the anthropologist agreed again.

  ‘What killed them off?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  I do, decided Raisa.

  ‘It’s been good, meeting like we have,’ said Lyudmilla, after a pause.

  ‘Wonderful,’ agreed Raisa, only half listening.

  ‘I’ve been talking to the people – the director himself – from the Moscow institute. He thinks there’s going to be years of anthropological work upon the cave people.’

  Unseen in the darkness, Raisa frowned in suddenly concentrated anticipation. ‘I should imagine there will be.’

  ‘How would you feel about my applying for a transfer to Moscow?’

  ‘That’s an exciting thought.’

  ‘I hoped you’d think that.’

  ‘I’ve got a tremendous amount to do, when I get back myself,’ said Raisa. ‘Might even have to go back to America for a long time. Don’t do anything until you hear from me.’

  ‘I won’t. But make it soon.’

  ‘As soon as I can.’

  Stoddart told Geraldine she couldn’t wait until there was definite confirmation of what she’d discussed with Walter Pelham because all in-flight conversations from Air Force One were automatically recorded and not to do so would be construed from the playback as her withholding something.

  For convenience she waited until they were all around the large oval table, being served individually grilled steak cooked by a White House chef.

&nbs
p; ‘You’re absolutely sure?’ demanded Partington at once, preparing for the following day’s headlines.

  ‘No,’ cautioned Geraldine. ‘What seems to be emerging from hospital records is that it’s taking longer – up to a month, sometimes even a week or two more than that – for people to die.’

  ‘What’s your interpretation?’ asked Reynell, his mind running parallel with the president’s.

  Geraldine shook her head. ‘There could be several. The most obvious is that the strain is mutating: becoming less virulent.’

  ‘What’s the potential significance?’ asked Amanda.

  ‘If we’ve got more time between the onset of the disease and death from it, we might be able to intercede and block its development: give the body’s immune system time to fight,’ said Geraldine.

  ‘What about the birds?’ questioned Partington, coming to Geraldine’s second relayed Fort Detrick development.

  ‘There could be a connection between the large number of dead birds and a lot of the locations where the illness has broken out—’ Geraldine began to explain.

  ‘I was right!’ Amanda interceded, with the benefit of a presidential audience. ‘Birds could be how it’s transmitted, just like West Nile encephalitis in New York!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Geraldine. ‘Birds could be a carrier.’ Protectively refusing to let the woman take the credit she added: ‘You’ll remember Jack suggested that a while back.’

  Thirty

  Raisa Ivanova Orlov was unconcerned – happy even – that behind her back her staff accused her of running her institute by the same principles with which Stalin governed the Soviet Union, believing fear of dismissal, which from an institute as prestigious as hers effectively guaranteed any sacked scientist was unemployable elsewhere, brought the best dedication and that the very fact of her knowing the condemnation proved an eager-informer intelligence service matching the Stalin-period NKVD, which made her total master of her empire. Her original accuser, a senior botanist, had made the complaint to agreeing laughter at lunchtime and been fired by five that evening. He now sold matroyshka dolls to tourists on the Arbat. One of the laboratory technicians who’d thought the remark funny collected pleasure boat tickets for cruise boats on the Moskva river and the other drove for a minor mafia brigade leader.