The Killing Ship

by Simon Beaufort

  It was especially galling as the Byers Peninsula was so magnificent that it was designated a Specially Protected Area, which meant that only those with permits were allowed to visit – and Berrister had one. As far as Graham was concerned, there was no reason whatsoever why they shouldn’t go, and if Berrister was too wimpy to cross the ice, then he could stay back at the camp while everyone else went.

  But dwelling on Berrister’s annoying decision was making him angry, so Graham pushed it from his mind and attempted to smile.

  ‘Lunch?’ he asked, producing a bag of water biscuits sandwiched together with peanut butter.

  Berrister regarded it unenthusiastically. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes – this.’ Graham poured some brownish-green lumps into a cup from a battered metal flask. ‘Sarah’s homemade soup, comprising mushy peas, spaghetti hoops, and three sachets of muesli.’

  ‘My God!’ breathed Berrister, repelled. ‘I knew supplies are running low, but I didn’t think we were that desperate.’

  ‘Supplies aren’t low, but all the good stuff’s gone, so we’re left with what no one wanted to eat earlier. At least that’s what Freddy says. Personally, I think he should have managed them better. I would’ve done.’

  Berrister ignored the Scot’s sour humour. It was always this way at the end of the season, when people were tired and ready to go home. Once away from the camp, they would all be best friends again, the niggles forgotten. He took a water biscuit, as the lesser of the two evils on offer. They ate in silence for a while.

  ‘Will you come back here next year?’ asked Graham eventually. ‘Or go somewhere else?’

  ‘Neither,’ replied Berrister. ‘I’ve decided to make this my last season. It’s time to move to lab-based research.’

  Graham raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ve heard that people lose their nerve down here after a while. They realise how hostile it is, and it scares them.’

  ‘I’m not “scared”,’ said Berrister, irked by the transparent attempt to shame him into agreeing to the trek to Byers. ‘This is a hostile environment, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool who has no business being here.’

  ‘Is that why you won’t let us go?’ pressed Graham. ‘Because you think it’s an unnecessary risk? Freddy says he’s been over there before, and it’s brilliant. We’d all love to go—’

  ‘Well, we can’t,’ said Berrister shortly. ‘Not while there’s still work to be done.’

  Graham shot him a sullen look, but could see that arguing would be futile. ‘This stew isn’t bad,’ he lied. ‘Try it.’

  Berrister took a tentative sip. It tasted exactly as he imagined it would, although there was a curious sweetness that suggested Sarah Henshaw had added some other ingredient that Graham hadn’t listed.

  ‘Now, about that gunfire,’ said Graham, packing away the flask. ‘Maybe another expedition has landed and is trying to attract our attention.’

  Berrister sighed. It was not yet noon, but lunch had been revolting, he was freezing cold, and Graham was being more annoying than usual. Again, he thought how glad he was that the season was almost over.

  Three kilometres away, Sarah Henshaw and her graduate student Lisa White were deep in conversation. They were an ill-matched pair. Sarah was tall, athletic and honey blond, while Lisa was a short, plump, African-American. The differences went beyond their physical dissimilarities, though – Sarah was caustic, single-minded and impatient, while Lisa was timid, diffident and shy.

  ‘The only boat within a hundred kilometres is our Zodiac,’ Sarah was insisting. ‘And Freddy wrecked that when he tried to drive it over some rocks. Are you sure you heard an engine?’

  Lisa nodded. She scrubbed at her cheek with a thickly gloved hand before grabbing an unsuspecting penguin chick. Sarah knelt next to her, and began to tag the struggling bird.

  ‘Another research team must’ve arrived,’ Lisa said.

  ‘They’d have radioed us,’ argued Sarah, fixing a plastic clip onto the bird’s flipper. ‘And the season is almost over – researchers are leaving, not coming. You must be going stir-crazy.’

  Lisa saw she would not convince the older woman. ‘I wonder what Freddy will have cooked us for dinner,’ she mused, her mind wandering to food, as it always did when she was cold.

  Sarah’s eyes – virtually all that was visible of her beneath her hood – gleamed with amusement. ‘I suspect he’ll have just warmed up the remains of my soup – to avenge himself on Andrew for saying no to the Byers jaunt.’

  Lisa released the bird, which waddled away to preen ruffled feathers. ‘I hope not – it’s not our fault that Andrew’s being such a wet blanket. Personally, I’d love to go on a hike for a few days.’

  Sarah sat back on her heels to watch the bird go. Her attitude to Freddy’s proposal was mixed. On one hand, she longed to see more of the island, but on the other, she was loath to squander precious time when she could be working. The season had gone very well for her – better than she had hoped – and she was anticipating some very interesting results.

  All her previous research had been on captive birds, and this was her first attempt at studying them in the wild. She had been apprehensive, although she had taken pains to conceal it – it would not do to appear nervous in front of her colleagues. For a start, one of them would be awarded a professorship later that year, and she intended to make sure it was her. Thus it was imperative that she had some decent results to publish.

  But Lisa’s attention was on the bay, eyes narrowed against the wind. Frowning, Sarah followed the direction of her gaze.

  ‘There!’ Lisa jumped to her feet and stabbed suddenly with her finger. ‘D’you see? A boat!’

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ said Sarah, after several minutes of seeing nothing but grey water. ‘It’s too rough for a boat, anyway.’

  ‘But I saw it!’

  Sarah shrugged. ‘Maybe it was a fishing buoy. But we don’t have all day – we can’t have Andrew promoted over me because you think some scrap of flotsam is a boat.’

  Reluctantly, Lisa tore her eyes away from the sea and returned to the business of catching penguins.

  Ajay Joshi took a deep breath of cold, clean air, relishing the sharp scent of old ice. He should have been collecting data for his doctorate in botany, but it had not taken him many days in the Antarctic to learn that life as a scientist was not for him, and he had made the decision to abandon his studies and follow his brother into computers instead. Unwilling to be a freeloader for the remainder of the season, he spent his time helping the others, especially the portly glaciologist Geoff Mortimer, who was amusing and easy company.

  That morning, he and Mortimer were taking samples of the sediments that were trapped in the glacier in long, dirty streaks. Or rather, he was: the laconic Yorkshireman was lounging against a rock, smoking. Mortimer deplored physical activity, and was only too happy to pass the privilege to someone else. Joshi’s project might be dead, but Mortimer’s was improving in leaps and bounds, and he had samples he would never have dreamed of taking had he been forced to dig them himself.

  Mortimer, like the other three scientists – Berrister, Sarah, and the elderly botanist Dan Wells – held a university post. Unlike them, he had little passion for his subject. He did as much as was necessary to keep his job, but no more, and he failed to understand why anyone would want a professorship – a position that would entail a lot more work.

  The radio crackled, and he pressed it to his ear.

  ‘Graham heard a gun, and Lisa heard a boat,’ he reported, putting it down again.

  ‘Maybe Worsley’s come early,’ suggested Joshi hopefully.

  ‘Now that would be nice, but in my experience they tend to be late.’

  ‘What was that?’ demanded Joshi, standing abruptly. ‘An engine?’

  Mortimer had heard nothing but the wind buffeting his hood.

  ‘Probably my stomach.’ He flipped open the lunch bag. ‘Watching all this hard work has given me
an appetite. You can have that muck Sarah “cooked” this morning. She called it stew, but I saw her adding a bar of stale chocolate. Or you can share my ginger nuts, a tin of peaches, and a hermetically sealed pizza base.’

  Joshi gaped at him. ‘Where did you get those?’

  ‘I took the precaution of stashing one or two morsels in my tent when the quality of the fare started to go downhill. Soft crackers and peanut butter are no use to a man of my princely girth. Keep your mouth shut, and I’ll give you some.’

  Joshi grinned conspiratorially, but they had barely begun to eat when a thin, strangled cry came distantly on the wind. It sounded so human that he felt a shiver run down his spine.

  ‘Skua?’ he asked uneasily.

  ‘Tern, maybe,’ said Mortimer. ‘Although it was odd – like one of those cartoons, when someone falls over a cliff-edge, and they scream all the way to the bottom.’

  ‘Or down a crevasse,’ added Joshi. He glanced at Mortimer, then both looked away, unsettled.

  The storm had abated, although there was still sufficient swell to make Lena ride uncomfortably. Hasim had spent the last three days in his cabin, too seasick to speak to anyone. Yablokov did not mind: it was more pleasant without his disapproving presence. He took a gulp of vodka from a battered flask, and offered Zurin the helmsman a swig. The heating was not working again, so it was cold on the bridge, and the vodka took the edge off the chill.

  ‘How much further?’ Yablokov asked.

  Zurin shrugged and took another sip from the flask. Yablokov knew it was the only answer he would get from the taciturn sailor. Zurin never spoke unless absolutely necessary, but he was a good seaman, and Yablokov was glad he was aboard – not only because he was a fellow Russian, but because he did not have to be supervised constantly, to ensure orders were carried out. Captain Garik was lucky to have Zurin, just as he was lucky to have Yablokov – a drunken captain needed a reliable first officer.

  Yablokov walked to the chart table and checked their position. Through the window, he could see the smooth white dome of Livingston’s ice cap. It was not beautiful, he thought – it was too stark and formidable. A fat seal slipped silently from an ice floe into the sea, its ease in the frigid wilderness making Yablokov feel more alien than ever. Even though he was familiar with ice and snow, he had been fighting the increasing conviction that he should never have accepted the commission to sail south.

  Lena was one of the Barents Sea cod fleet, but overfishing meant it was difficult to make a living from cod any more, so Yablokov and half of Lena’s crew had agreed to sign on for a journey south. The other half had declined, so the shortfall had been made up from sailors recruited by the company that chartered the ship. They included French, Nigerians, Filipinos, Norwegians and Egyptians, to name but a few of the nationalities aboard.

  At that moment, the door opened and Hasim entered. He looked around critically, and the relaxed atmosphere immediately turned formal. The two Norwegians stopped chatting and turned to their computers; the communications officer slipped his paperback into his pocket and put on his headphones; and the captain sat straighter in his chair. Only the implacable Zurin did not react. Yablokov lit a cigarette, hoping the smoke would disguise the vodka on his breath.

  ‘Why are we still moving?’ demanded Hasim in impeccable Russian. He spoke multiple languages with what Yablokov thought might be a French accent, although he would not have put money on it. That, together with his looks and the occasional remark about some past experience or other, suggested that perhaps he was Algerian, but no one was sure.

  ‘Because the swell slowed us down,’ explained Yablokov. ‘Then we lost an hour by launching the Zodiac.’

  He gave Hasim a pointed glance. He was not a pernickety man, always braying about Health and Safety regulations, but to launch an inflatable so far out to sea was madness. He was just glad that the men detailed to go in it were Hasim’s people – the ones Hasim referred to ambiguously as his ‘team’. Yablokov would not have wanted his crew to embark on such a risky venture.

  ‘Any news from them?’ Hasim asked.

  ‘Not yet. They’re still out of radio range.’

  ‘Still?’ Hasim scowled, as if he considered it Yablokov’s fault that they might have come to grief. ‘Then get the gear ready – we may have to act fast.’

  ‘Which gear?’ asked Yablokov slyly, knowing that Hasim would not have the faintest idea what was required.

  ‘The gear you anticipate we will require,’ retorted Hasim coolly. ‘And hurry up about it. Time is of the essence.’

  ‘You heard him,’ said Garik. He had hairy fingers, dirty nails and callused skin. His eyes were red-rimmed, but he did not appear to be drunk as he gave one of his wolfish grins. ‘Let’s make this a trip to remember.’

  Yablokov doubted he would forget it.

  Berrister and Graham crept to where four elephant seals lounged contentedly in the icy wind. Their target was the largest animal, and Berrister held a dose of ketamine calculated from its estimated body weight. Sedating seals was not easy: too much made them go into ‘dive mode’, after which it was difficult to start them breathing again. Too little meant they might wake up unexpectedly.

  Approaching from behind, Berrister injected the sedative. The seal reared with a furious roar, but then lay back down again. When he was sure the anaesthetic was working, he began to take his samples. Unfortunately, he had misjudged the dose, and the animal started to come round too soon. It rolled suddenly, and splintering glass told them that the remaining ampoules of anaesthetic had been crushed, effectively ending the day’s work.

  ‘Well, I’d had enough for today anyway,’ he sighed. ‘Let’s finish early.’

  ‘Can we climb the scarp first?’ asked Graham, once he had finished packing away their equipment.

  Berrister regarded him askance. It was a long way up there. ‘Why?’

  ‘To have a look around.’ Graham’s jaw was set, and Berrister saw a determined glint in the pale blue eyes. ‘You said the sounds were ice, but I’m not so sure.’

  Graham interpreted Berrister’s moment of hesitation as concession, and set off towards the foot of the rocky escarpment without further ado.

  ‘Wait!’ shouted Berrister irritably. ‘The wind’s picking up, and the barometer suggests we’re in for another storm. It’s not a good time to—’

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said Graham, glancing around but not stopping. ‘Are you coming?’

  Berrister had no choice. It was against his own rules to let someone make the climb alone, and he could see that Graham had made up his mind. Rolling his eyes, he began to follow, cursing the soft sand that made climbing such hard work. The incline grew steeper as they neared the top, and they were forced to use their hands to keep from falling. Berrister glanced down, and saw the four seals lying far below, like brown slugs.

  Eventually, they reached the top, where they could look down on their camp and Walker Bay to the west and the huge expanse of South Bay to the east. The day was cloudy, but the view was still spectacular. While he waited for his breathing to slow, Berrister sat on a rock and gazed across an uneasy sea, looking for the blue whales. He soon felt himself growing chilled, the warmth generated by the climb quickly wicked away by the wind.

  ‘Look,’ said Graham, pointing down to the beach on the far side – the one opposite to where they had been working. ‘There are lines in the sand near the edge of the glacier.’

  ‘Seal tracks,’ replied Berrister automatically, but then frowned. They were too straight to have been made by seals. Graham evidently thought so, too, because he shot Berrister a haughty glance and began to bound down the scarp towards them at a pace Berrister felt was far from safe. Alarmed, he shouted for the field hand to stop, but the wind tore his words away. Irked, he saw there was nothing for it but to follow him down.

  ‘Andrew!’ shouted Graham, gesturing frantically for him to hurry. As Berrister jogged towards him, Graham waved something in the air. ‘It’s a d
og-end.’

  Berrister took it from him. It was indeed a cigarette filter, but it might have been there for months or even years. Rubbish decayed slowly in the Antarctic and, despite the universally held belief that its beaches were pristine, human flotsam was washed up on them every day.

  ‘And look there.’ Graham pointed again. ‘Blood!’

  Berrister crouched down to inspect a red patch in the sand. ‘But—’

  ‘Gunfire, a boat, a cigarette end and a pool of blood,’ interrupted Graham. ‘Someone else is here – someone dangerous.’

  ‘There might be another scientific team, I suppose,’ acknowledged Berrister, ‘although I would have expected them to contact us first. But they won’t be carrying guns – it would contravene the Antarctic Treaty.’

  The Antarctic Treaty was an agreement signed by all the countries operating in the region. It regulated international relations, established measures to protect wildlife and the environment, and set up guidelines for behaviour. One of its rules forbade weapons of any description, and another banned hunting.

  ‘What if they’re criminals?’ persisted Graham.

  ‘And why would criminals be here?’ asked Berrister, exasperated. ‘There’ll be a rational and innocent explanation for all these things, you’ll see.’

  Unconvinced, Graham prowled the beach, looking for the evidence that would prove his theory. Berrister shook his head, and headed back towards the scarp, thinking that if another team had arrived, he and Graham should be at the camp to greet them, not messing about elsewhere.

  Dan Wells loved the Antarctic, and had done ever since he had first visited it as a young man in the 1960s. Research had changed since then, and tape measures and the ‘eye of faith’ had given way to the kind of elaborate instruments that Berrister attached to his seals, which even now were tracking their every move and relaying them to a computer at home.

  But Wells preferred to work with a field microscope and a pair of callipers. He knew his colleagues regarded him as a dinosaur, but he did not care. He hated relying on technology over which he had no control, and always gloated when the others’ equipment broke or misbehaved.