Ice Age

by Brian Freemantle

  Thirty-Two

  By the time Stoddart’s helicopter returned to Fort Detrick, with the French science minister an unexpected additional passenger, Guy Dupuy was in isolation and the brain swelling established by an MRI scan had confirmed the encephalitis for which he was already on fluid replacement treatment. The prognosis was for a full recovery, although any future working involvement with the science group was doubtful. The virus had also been stain-located in Dupuy’s blood and urine. Everything he’d taken and worn during the Baikal expedition had been scientifically scoured for the Ixodas tick that infected the man. None had been found, but there had been other discoveries within Fort Detrick as intriguing as the intestinal infestation.

  Geraldine asked for the meeting to talk about her concern at their now further reduced research assessment capabilities, but before she could Walter Pelham hurried in with his fresh disclosure.

  ‘Ticks?’ queried Stoddart.

  ‘Two separate species our entomologists have never encountered before, although they’re sure they’re of the Ixodas genus,’ confirmed Pelham. ‘We’ve gone back to the Smithsonian and to London.’

  ‘Where – how – were they found?’ asked Stoddart.

  ‘One was among the specimens the Listvyanka entomologist collected from the caves,’ said the director.

  ‘The other?’ persisted Stoddart.

  ‘On the nasal and ear hair Geraldine removed yesterday from the Baikal males. Both species are microscopic: they were only detected under electron magnification. They’re certainly too minute to consider any sort of dissection. We’re looking for more on the female bodies now, of course.’

  ‘How many of these unknown ticks have your people lifted, so far?’ asked Geraldine.

  ‘Eight,’ replied the man at once. ‘Five of one, three of another. And there’s the three that you brought back, with the other specimens.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ prompted Geraldine.

  ‘For what?’ asked Stoddart.

  It was Geraldine who answered. ‘They would have been frozen, like everything else at Baikal. So would any infection they carry. They can be introduced into laboratory animals.’

  ‘Already being done,’ assured Pelham.

  ‘You said you’d found some more worms, in the females?’ said Stoddart, picking up on what else Pelham had told them. ‘You got enough to test those the same way?’

  ‘That’s being done, too,’ said the director.

  ‘We’re talking only about Baikal,’ reminded Stoddart. ‘Even if it is important, it can’t help with Alaska or the Antarctic, can it?’

  ‘The special teams we sent to both did lift plant and insect material,’ said Pelham. ‘They’re still sending stuff back. We’re repeating every experiment – going back through everything we’ve already done – to see if we’ve missed anything.’

  ‘The climatic conditions in both would be close enough to what Baikal was like when our cave colony became infected and died,’ reflected Stoddart.

  ‘This could be real progress: and we’re on top of it, right here,’ said Pelham, unusually animated and anxious to ensure it was well established that the discoveries had been made at Fort Detrick.

  ‘Which brings us to something that’s worrying me,’ said Geraldine. ‘If it is significant, we’ve been lucky: incredibly so. But now that Dupuy’s out and Raisa’s in Moscow, how are we from now on going to be able to cope with everything coming in from outside?’

  ‘Not at all if we try to do it ourselves, which would be unscientifically stupid because we wouldn’t know what we’re looking for, beyond our own disciplines,’ frowned Pelham, wondering if he’d missed whatever point the woman was making. ‘It was helminthology which picked up the infestation, entomology that found the microscopic ticks. We’ve got to go on filtering specifics through their individual specialisations: let them isolate the inconsistencies or the comparisons, before passing it on.’

  The logic was embarrassingly obvious and Geraldine was embarrassed. She’d let herself get too close: too hands-on, imagining only she and the inner group capable of reaching a judgment. Relentlessly Geraldine forced the honesty on. Not her and the inner group. Only her. Subconsciously – maybe not even as unaware as that – she’d conceitedly promoted herself the indispensable arbiter of everything: a scientific Solomon. She said: ‘You sure there’s enough people here to handle the amount of delegation?’

  ‘We’ve got said Pelham. ‘If one particular section starts being overwhelmed, we’ll bring in more people. As simple as that.’carte blanche,’

  ‘Seems the obvious way to handle the workload,’ said Stoddart.

  Pelham said: ‘Anything yet from Washington about Raisa’s claims?’

  ‘Lyalin hadn’t shown by the time we left and she hasn’t responded to any of the direct messages to Moscow,’ said Stoddart. ‘Amanda is going to call if Lyalin makes contact tonight.’

  ‘We still supposedly working together or has Moscow pulled out?’ demanded the installation director.

  ‘Lyalin wouldn’t be back if they’d pulled out,’ judged Stoddart.

  ‘What are we going to do about what we’ve turned up here in the last twenty-four hours?’ asked Pelham.

  ‘Let Blair House know, so Lyalin can be told,’ proposed Geraldine at once. ‘Nothing’s happened to change this being a combined investigation.’ It was good to be responding properly, as part of a team. It wasn’t to be long before she realized how similar her thinking had initially been to that of Raisa Orlov.

  In the thirty-two hours since her return the autopsies had been completed on all the Siberian bodies and the unspecific enzyme discovered in eighteen of them, all but three more pronounced than it had been in Gennardi Markelov.

  ‘The enzyme’s the key,’ Raisa insisted, using the sexually as well as the professionally-dependant Grenkov as her sounding board; he knew better than anyone the danger of re-telling anything she ever told him.

  ‘We don’t know how it attacks,’ argued Sergei Grenkov. ‘Let’s test it on animals before you make any public announcement. You’ve not got enough to make any claims yet.’

  ‘It caused the complete annihilation of the Neanderthal species,’ dramatically declared Raisa.

  Grenkov gazed at her in total astonishment. ‘What!’

  ‘The Neanderthal became extinct,’ said Raisa. ‘No one, until now, knows why.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with what we’re involved in now?’ groped the worried Grenkov.

  Raisa looked at him, pityingly. ‘Everything! This illness is what destroyed an entire ancestral species!’

  ‘You’ve got no scientific justification – no evidence – for saying that,’ disputed the man, with rare courage. This was irrational: deluded.

  ‘The world’s seen the Baikal bodies.’

  ‘Neolithic, not Neanderthal.’

  ‘There’s no scientific evidence to contradict me.’

  ‘It’ll be enough just to identify the enzyme and how it works, so that we can reverse the infection,’ pleaded Grenkov.

  ‘No!’ rejected Raisa. It was time she dispensed with Sergei Grenkov. He’d even become disappointing in bed. ‘I’ve no intention whatsoever of letting this be taken away from me.’

  Grenkov jerked his head towards the stacked, unopened folders on the two side tables of Raisa’s office. ‘There’s an enormous amount to do. Let’s try to do it – see what’s here – while we give the animal tests time.’

  ‘Only until we get the test results,’ conceded Raisa, acknowledging the sense in at least looking through what had come in from outside. ‘If they’re inconclusive I’ll make the announcement.’

  ‘I want to make it clear – and I wish you to make it even clearer to your respective governments – that this had no official sanction,’ said Gregori Lyalin. He spoke as if personally addressing Peter Reynell.

  No one responded, although Reynell’s mind was leapfrogging ahead.

  ‘All I can do, on behalf of my own g
overnment, is apologize,’ Lyalin stumbled on. Lying on the table between them, like a taunt, was the Moscow-intended research that Gerard Buchemin had personally brought back on an early morning helicopter from Fort Detrick.

  ‘It would reflect very badly upon your government if it were to become public,’ said Reynell. It had to be turned into an advantage – a favour – that he could call upon to be returned sometime in the future.

  ‘I fully understand that,’ accepted Lyalin.

  ‘I’m not sure how much trust Dr Rothman will have in any future working relationship; if there can be any future professional relationship,’ persisted Reynell.

  ‘Which compounds a problem,’ said Amanda, following Reynell’s lead. ‘Dr Orlov’s remarks in Irkutsk – and her having gone back to Moscow instead of returning here – have already attracted a lot of media speculation about the co-operation.’

  ‘Had you intended her eventually to come back here?’ asked Reynell, seeing his opening. He supposed Amanda would need the president’s approval and Buchemin would have to consult with Paris, but a diplomatic difficulty would be avoided by their agreeing to the woman’s return.

  ‘I think it depends upon your acceptance rather than my intention,’ said Lyalin.

  Perfect, thought Reynell. ‘What has occurred has been unfortunate but I don’t think it should be worsened by allowing the media speculation to intensify. Professor Orlov should be told not to make any more public statements without the knowledge of colleagues with whom she is supposed to be liaising – colleagues to whom an apology is owed – and brought back here as soon as possible to share the importance of whatever it is she believes she has discovered. As a measure of our good faith, I also suggest that the material that Monsieur Buchemin brought back with him from Fort Detrick should be relayed to Moscow, in case it contributes to that discovery.’

  Lyalin looked uneasily towards the head-bent notetakers. Moscow was being patronized and Reynell would emerge in the records as the broad-thinking statesman befitting his soon-to-be-crowned leadership. It was still, Lyalin acknowledged, far better than their attitude might have been and hopefully wouldn’t endanger the impending visit of the Russian financial delegation. He guessed it would require a positive directive from the Russian White House to make Raisa Orlov apologize, but what she’d done justified being put before the president. ‘I think I can say my government would be grateful if that were to be the feeling of everyone represented here.’

  ‘But I agree that the situation should not be allowed to get out of proportion,’ said Buchemin.

  ‘Why don’t we convene again later today?’ suggested Amanda.

  Neither Henry Partington nor the Elysée Palace were prepared to agree so quickly – both seeking reciprocal advantage, which Reynell used for further benefit – but there were a lot of separate developments, which by initially remaining unconnected caused some excitement, conflicting confusion and even despair.

  The most immediate came the afternoon of the Blair House meeting, when haematologists at Fort Detrick isolated from the recovered blood of the Siberian bodies an enzyme that matched that in the newly provided tissue of Gennardi Markelov, which kept Geraldine Rothman on the telephone to geneticists in England for thirty minutes before helicoptering yet again to Washington to fly specimens back, this time for very specific analysis.

  Thirty-Three

  The first bit of what was eventually to become an important piece of the scattered jigsaw arrived at Fort Detrick more as a correction. The doubt of a brilliant twenty-seven-year-old sea mammal expert at Japan’s Oceanography Institute that the whales washed up at Kita-Kyushu, Hamamatsu and Kanazawa and found floating off the island of Shikoku had all, in fact, died from influenza. Detailed autopsies conducted on three found evidence consistent with the disease but in two there were also indications of organ and bone degeneration that had caused the animals to suffocate where their frames had become too weakened to support their body weight, even supported by the sea’s buoyancy.

  The response to Pelham’s requests for case history proof of death from the illness taking longer had been so great – from a total of eleven countries – that it needed computer analysis spread over days to confirm that the duration had definitely lengthened to an average of one month. That alone justified Geraldine’s Air Force One hope of an intervention treatment period, but another commonality thrown up by computer comparison was that, additionally, eighty-five per cent of the victims suffered respiratory difficulties, up to and including pneumonia. At Geraldine’s urging, requests were sent back to hospitals in Canberra, Tokyo, New Delhi, Vienna and Rome for body tissue specimens to be collected for further, specific medical comparison.

  Quite separately, but from every one of those eleven responding countries, there also came matching ornithological reports of bird mortality so extensive that the term epidemic was common to all. So were the symptoms, among a wide variety of species, of organ and bone ageing, and to a sufficient number of countries went new requests for tissue specimens.

  To Walter Pelham’s increasing satisfaction – although not immediately to any of their better understanding – a lot of the unexplained continued to be detected within Fort Detrick. The majority of the turds recovered from the cave floor proved to be animal and in all of them whole or parts of the unknown worm species were recovered. From the fur of the animal carcase, specially briefed veterinarians who might otherwise have overlooked them lifted both species of the microscopic tick, and in the bat droppings was located an enzyme practically indistinguishable from that in the blood of the cave dwellers. Strictly following their remit to search for the incongruous or unexplained, drafted-in paleobotanists matched unknown nothofagal pollen and seeds from bores sunk in the Antarctica and Alaska with unidentified seeds and actual, although never-before-seen, plants from the Baikail caves.

  Although it was another first time oversight, Pelham’s greatest satisfaction came from his pathologists’ re-examination of the Antarctic and Alaskan victims. There were microscopic ticks on nine of the victims, including Morris Neilson and Chip Burke, both of whom had gone into the Antarctic field station with Jack Stoddart.

  In every case they were in the nasal or respiratory passages.

  ‘What’s it amount to?’ asked Stoddart, when Pelham announced the finding in the rescue party victims.

  ‘What it always has been,’ said Geraldine. ‘A puzzle we haven’t yet solved. But we’re getting there.’

  Henry Partington took the longest to agree the response to Raisa Orlov’s withholding; his every move – or lack of it – calculated in staged priorities. It was essential to ratchet Russian nervousness up to its maximum to make Moscow beholden when he made what would appear not one but two sweeping gestures of political co-operation and into that carefully crafted scheme neatly fitted the opportunity finally to meet Peter Reynell on a future leader-to-leader basis as well as ensuring Amanda O’Connell’s total and future loyalty.

  An unwitting Paul Spencer was the initial cog, used to extend the invitation in front of Gregori Lyalin at the Blair House session at which Gerard Buchemin announced the Elysée acceptance, which left the equally unwitting Amanda to explain uncomfortably that she’d had no instruction from the White House and to convey the impression – heightened by the summons – that there remained serious American reluctance.

  The official Russian film of the Baikal caves had either in part or in full occupied television and film channels over the preceding days – the French loudly proclaimed news of Guy Dupuy’s illness the most recent replay reason – but although he’d been named, Peter Reynell had not been visibly identifiable from far too many others in his protective suit. To arrive separately from Amanda at the White House precisely at the time the Washington-based British journalists and television crews had been given, he excused himself from her by claiming a need to consult with London from the British embassy. Reynell entered grave-faced and headshaking against the shouted questions. Amanda was already inside
, in the Oval Office ante-room. They’d inventively slept together every night since Reynell’s return from London and from her having kept nothing imaginable back from him in bed, he believed she would have at least hinted at the hidden purpose for this encounter if she’d known it.

  Amanda said: ‘Anything I should know about London’s thinking?’

  He shook his head, not having spoken to anyone apart from the embassy’s dutifully media-alerting press section. ‘What about you?’

  She shook her head in return, not bothering to reply. Over the last few days she’d actually fantasized what a formidable political, as well as sexual couple, she and Reynell would have made. It would, she decided, have been a worldconquering combination. The cooling realism, confirmed by watching his actions before his White House arrival on live CNN, was that Peter Reynell didn’t want anyone sharing his parade.

  The president wasn’t at his specially adapted desk, backing on to the gardens, but deeper into the room, already seated in the high-backed, comfortably armed easy chair just as carefully carpentered to put him upon the same level as anyone seated in the lower, softer armchairs and sofas. He rose, briefly, to position them in their assigned seats.

  ‘There’d seem to be more than one reason for our first meeting,’ he opened, to Reynell. If the man’s elevation to British premier was as inevitable as the London ambassador, as well as all the media, were predicting, it was important Reynell recognize from the outset who in the future would always occupy the master chair.

  ‘Although not by any means our last, I hope,’ said Reynell. It wasn’t beyond speculation that he could have sat the man on his lap and innovated a world leader ventriloquist act.

  ‘I hope that too.’

  Your territory, your posturing, thought Reynell: so you lead.

  Extremely confident, judged Partington. ‘But before then we have more immediate things to discuss.’

  ‘We have indeed,’ agreed Reynell, unhelpfully. From the Nixon debacle he was very aware that he was talking in voice-recorded surroundings.