‘Looks like a weather station,’ Jim said. ‘The base must be around here somewhere.’
A steel ladder was attached to the underside of a metal balcony that protruded approximately three metres away from a summit that hid the rest of the building.
‘I think you’re right,’ Tom said, having to shout over the weather and crashing waves. ‘There’s a dock there, just beyond the remnants of that ship.’ He pointed forward to the aft section of a large craft. The jagged metal stuck up like ancient standing stone, the prop shaft twisted and bent, indicating a fatal incident.
With their much smaller and more manoeuvrable craft, they made it safely around the wreck, through a narrow valley within the rocks, and came to a dock made from a random selection of wooden panels.
Tom brought them in close enough for Jim to throw a rope over one of the wooden posts used as a bollard. The tide was calmer here in this section, the mountain’s valleys and crevices creating a kind of secluded bay protected from the worst of the storm.
When they had tied the boat securely, the group clambered up onto the dock and made their way up the ladder embedded into the side of the mountain. One by one they ascended, slowly and without drama, until they reached the balcony.
Eva guessed it must have been about twenty metres above the dock. She pulled herself through an opening before turning round to help Annette, the last of the team, up onto the balcony.
Tom, Jim, Marcus, Annette, and Eva stared at the corrugated metal-fronted building in silence. It was the first time any of them had seen any sign of humanity outside of the flotilla since the drowning.
Eva welled up with emotion; a lump built in her throat, choking down the words that she was unable to fully express. Tears softened her vision. The sight of this human-made building brought back years of loss and grief in a tsunami of hyper-real experience. She fell to her knees, dropped her head into her hands, crying and laughing in a mixture of relief and profound sadness at what had been lost.
Jim knelt down and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He didn’t say anything. No one did; there was no need. It was clear they all felt exactly the same.
Eva stood up on shaking legs, rejoining the others. The cool winds embraced them, stilled them as they looked on at the building. Eva broke her attention away and saw the others wide-eyed, mouths open, their breaths pluming in the chilled air.
Her body seemed to vibrate from within at the profundity of it all. Annette let out a short yipping laugh. Jim shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.
The realisation of what had been lost and what each of them had gone through defied communication and transcended it in a kind of group clairvoyance.
‘We’re here,’ Marcus finally said through his mask, flinging his arms up. Then louder, he shouted, ‘We’re fucking here. We did it!’ He pulled his backpack of ropes and tools over his shoulder and approached the building with long, loping strides that almost broke into a run.
A belly laugh came from Eva, her sadness blunted for a moment as she pictured Marcus as a small boy heading to the water’s edge on a beach, unable to contain his excitement in an entirely un-self-conscious manner.
‘You ready to go inside?’ Jim said, standing up and holding his hand out.
Eva took it. ‘Yeah, I think so . . .’
‘Come on, then. Let’s get out of this weather and see what all the fuss is about this place.’ He smiled at her with a wide, genuine smile, his cheeks creasing outside his mask and his eyes narrowing behind weathered wrinkles.
Eva was pleased Jim had convinced Duncan to stay on the sub with the others – Ahmed, Brad, Karel, Bernita, and Patrice. With the way he had been acting lately around Eva and Marcus, his presence would have added friction she was happy to do without, especially in this moment. She didn’t want anything to spoil what they had done., She walked towards the front of the building, the others surrounding her, and tasted the bitter tang of anxiety in the back of her throat.
Just what or who would be waiting for them?
Dust and darkness.
Not quite the warm welcome she was secretly hoping for.
Tom and Marcus had used a crowbar to prise open the door: a thick piece of galvanised steel, a sheet of frosted ice colonising its surface. The hinges had cracked and protested, but the strength of the two men had finally overwhelmed the ice that had grown around the hardware.
Jim was at the front, shining that massive flashlight inside, sweeping it around in slow, deliberate arcs. The first part of the interior looked to be a communal area. A low wooden table sat in the middle of the roughly ten-metre-square room. A pair of wooden, pew-like benches sat on either side.
A gathering of debris lay about the table – Lucky Strike cigarette packets, a couple of crumpled juice boxes, and some small silver trays that Eva recognised as freeze-dried microwave meal containers.
Jim’s light reflected off half a dozen pieces of white plastic cutlery. One fork in particular caught Eva’s attention. She inched inside, staying close to Jim and making sure she didn’t step on anything. Marcus was close behind her; she could sense that his body was taut and alert. He had placed a hand on the lower part of her back – either to help guide himself in the dim light, or as a gesture of support; perhaps both.
Eva picked up the fork from the table with her gloved fingertips and held it in the beam of Jim’s light. ‘Dried blood,’ she said. ‘On the handle, not the prongs.’
‘What does that mean?’ Annette said from somewhere behind Eva.
‘I’m not sure yet.’ Eva tried to imagine what had happened here. There were clearly enough trays and individual piles of debris to suggest that the place might have been populated by at least half a dozen people. But where were they? And what had happened to them?
Jim moved off to the right of the room with Tom, the beam of the flashlight pushing back the gloom and washing light across surfaces that had probably not seen any for years, given the thickness of dust and frost.
On the wall behind a metal bench, a dozen or so pieces of paper were clipped to a section of pegboard. The details on the paper were obscured by frost.
Jim leaned closer.
‘What is it?’ Eva asked him.
‘It’s hard to tell. The writing is in Japanese, by the look of it. There’s some translation beneath, but they’re not words I’ve seen before.’
Tom squinted and leaned closer, wiping a gloved hand carefully across one of the A5-sized papers. ‘I think it’s meteorological. There’re mentions here of precipitation and seismic values.’
The room had no windows. Above them, Eva made out a series of dead overhead fluorescent bulbs, the kind the police station had used in the offices, the kind that would give her a headache with their incessant buzzing.
‘This place is giving me the creeps,’ Annette said from somewhere to Eva’s left. ‘It’s like a morgue.’
‘Thanks for that encouraging image,’ Marcus replied.
‘We should all keep our masks on, and don’t touch anything,’ Annette advised.
‘Must be a scientific outpost,’ Jim said, continuing to explore the room with Tom, using the flashlight to investigate each nook and cranny.
Handing the light to Tom, Jim knelt down in front of a small file cabinet and eased the drawer open with a penknife. He pulled out a dusty folder and peered inside before retrieving a fistful of thin notebooks. He flicked through one with cold, shaking hands. ‘Journals full of notes on the weather,’ he said, his breath pluming before him.
‘Must be from the antenna and instruments outside,’ Tom added.
‘Yeah, it’s got to be a weather station,’ Jim said. ‘But there’s nothing here that signifies anything to do with Gracefield or the drowning.’
‘Maybe not,’ Marcus said. ‘But the data must have been useful for something, right?’
Eva and the rest assumed the question was rhetorical and kept on searching. Eva had moved towards the rear of the building, stepping around the commu
nal table and benches. She came to a built-in kitchenette that featured a microwave, gas stove, and a pair of cupboards attached to the wall. Next to the stove was a two-metre-wide worktop that still had some remnants of a meal in progress: pieces of carrot and potatoes frozen and preserved in place.
She stepped to the side to inspect the cupboards and kicked something hard and metallic. Another flashlight! She picked it up; the cold of its grip chilled her skin through her glove. At first, nothing happened when she switched it on, but with a few taps it flickered to life, shining a weak beam through its broken lens.
The sudden change in light caught a contrast of tones at her feet: more dried blood. This time a pool of it had run like a river beneath the worktop. She traced it up and found a spray of blood on the back of the kitchenette wall, and spots on the work surface.
‘Looks like the vegetables fought back,’ Marcus said, appearing by her side in that omnipresent way of his.
‘I don’t think this is a cooking injury we’re looking at here. That spray across the wall, the way it arcs and splatters against the work surface . . . I think we’re looking at a murder. If you imagine someone standing here, preparing a meal, then someone else comes up from behind and cuts their throat . . .’
‘I’ll trust your skills on that,’ Marcus said. ‘But if you’re right, who’d have done that, and why?’
‘And where are the bodies?’ Annette asked.
‘All good questions,’ Eva replied as she continued to explore the area with the broken flashlight. ‘I don’t know yet; let’s keep looking.’
To the right of the kitchenette stood a metal door she assumed led to a pantry or perhaps a freezer for storage. The handle wouldn’t budge; it was frozen in place. Above the handle were two square pieces of plastic the size of a thumbnail, one red and one green, neither illuminating. She guessed the door was electronically locked and, without power, there’d be no way of opening it.
At the opposite end of the building, Jim and Tom were making their way down the left side, scanning with their light, investigating each piece of paper they found. Halfway down the wall, Jim stopped and reached out.
‘What is it?’ Eva asked.
‘Another door.’
The group gathered around and watched as Tom worked the frozen-shut door with the crowbar again. Unlike the one Eva had just looked at it, this one didn’t appear to have any kind of electronic lock on it. It took a few minutes of effort, the sweat glistening on the captain’s forehead, to finally prise it free.
The door swung inwards. Tom toppled forward. Eva and Marcus reached out for him, grabbing his coat.
‘Holy shit,’ Tom said. ‘Pull me back!’
They did so quickly, dragging Tom clear of the open doorway. Jim and Eva aimed their lights into the newly discovered room.
‘My god,’ Eva whispered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Eva counted six bodies. Three of them were piled atop each other in the far right corner of what looked to be an office. In the middle was a large, square desk, around which sat three more bodies, slumped over keyboards.
Eva stepped farther into the room, watching where she placed each footstep as though she were back on the force and approaching a fresh crime scene. But there was no concern about disturbing evidence here; it was clear to all what had happened.
The bodies slumped over the desk were skeletons inside half-rotten blue insulated coveralls. The frozen air kept down the smell of rot.
‘Fuck,’ Marcus said.
Jim swung his light round. ‘What the hell happened here?’
‘Bloody obvious, ain’t it?’ Marcus said. ‘Someone killed the poor buggers right where they sat. I guess someone wasn’t happy with the weather report.’
‘This isn’t the time for joking around,’ Jim said.
‘Who’s joking?’ Marcus said.
‘All right,’ Tom said, interrupting. ‘Let’s keep looking around. I’m sure we’ll learn more if we stop bickering.’
Still reeling from the initial shock, they resumed their search. Tom and Annette were silent as they moved around the desks, looking at the macabre tableau. Eva noticed that the someone had executed the workers at their desks from behind: a single bullet hole in the back of each skull.
When she investigated the other three bodies, she found the same thing, though given their positions it seemed likely someone had killed them elsewhere in the building and brought them in here.
‘How long do you think they’ve been dead?’ Marcus said, looking at Eva.
Although she was no coroner, she had picked up some knowledge from those she had worked with.
‘Given the condition of the skeletons,’ Eva said, ‘this must have been done a long time ago. The cold weather would have slowed decomposition and ruled out any insects that would have feasted on the remains. The process must have taken years.’
Annette, hunched over one of the skeletons at the desk, nodded her silent agreement.
‘Any sign of why they were killed?’ Jim asked, exploring the far left of the room, where a wheeled trolley held a cache of computer equipment and two trays of printouts on its metal surface. He was leafing through the sheets, holding them up to his light.
‘Probably knew too much,’ Marcus said, looking over Jim’s shoulder. ‘Can’t see any other reason, can you? Not like some boffins at the top of a mountain are a danger to anyone, are they?’ He glanced at Eva, then at Tom, who was looking away.
Eva noticed the insinuation, but ignored it for now. During their preparations to leave the sub, Jim had confided in Eva that he had approached Tom about his involvement. Like Eva, Jim also believed that Tom wasn’t directly involved.
Belief or not, though, Eva was keeping an eye on Tom throughout this expedition to see if he displayed any behaviours that would indicate that he knew more than he was letting on. So far, he seemed as in the dark as anyone.
Eva swept her light over the pile of remains. Reflective plastic ID cards, attached to the breast pockets of the coveralls, shimmered. She used her foot to gently roll the topmost body back and unclipped the card. She read it aloud: ‘Dr. Karl Schwimmer.’
Annette caught on and checked the others. Finding another ID card, she said, ‘This one was Dr. Henrietta Valuev . . . and there looks to be a logo here. Jim, can you shine some light on this, please?’
Jim obliged and squinted at the card. ‘WhiteSquare Industries and Research,’ he read aloud.
Eva checked hers and although the print was half scrubbed off from use, she could just about make out the same words. ‘At least we know who they worked for,’ she said.
Marcus, leaning over Eva’s shoulders, read the words aloud, then addressed Tom. ‘Know anything about WhiteSquare Industries, Tom? Were they a military sub-contractor?’
Tom, having taken up Jim’s role of going through the printouts, joined the others around the central table. ‘Not that I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but it’s not a company I’ve had any dealings with.’
Marcus was staring right at Tom, scrutinising every word. Eva, though, sensed that Tom was telling the truth. She decided to just come out with it and mention the elephant in the room. ‘Could this setup, and these scientists, be part of this Banshee Project?’
The group seemed to become still then; all faces turned to Tom.
The captain blinked twice and finally, breaking the silence, said, ‘Anything is possible right now.’
‘Anything?’ Marcus said. ‘Like your defection to the Russians?’
Eva slapped Marcus on the arm. ‘Enough of that,’ she said. ‘We need to be pulling together.’ Sure, she was playing good cop to Marcus’s bad, but it was one way to test Tom’s truth.
Tom remained patient and took a deep breath through his mask, the paper crumpling with the vacuum. Then it crackled outward with his sigh. ‘You lot are never going to truly trust me, are you? I don’t know how many times I have to say I had nothing to do with the spies, and nothing to do w
ith some damned project. What more do you want me to say?’
‘He’s right,’ Jim said. ‘All this suspicion’s going to get us killed. We need to be united; have you not learned anything from the Faust and Stanic events?’
Marcus shrugged theatrically. ‘Hey, I’m only saying what everyone was thinking. I want to believe as much as you do, but we also have to ask, be sure.’
‘Well, I’m fucking sure,’ Jim said, shouting now, his eyes growing wide. ‘I’m sick of your constant undermining, Graves. You either get with the group or you can fuck off and swim with the sharks.’
‘Easy,’ Eva said, stepping between the two men. ‘This isn’t helping anything, is it? Let’s just keep looking. If the truth is here, we’ll find it.’
Tom, having seemingly resigned himself to the fate of not being trusted, simply carried on calmly, raising the piece of paper he had retrieved. ‘This report seems to be the last one printed,’ he said, pointing to the timestamp at the top of the paper. ‘January 2015.’
‘A few months after the drowning,’ Eva said. ‘So if these were killed around the same time, it means they’ve been here for nearly three years. That’d explain their condition, the poor souls.’
While Tom continued to study the papers, Eva strolled slowly around the room, picturing what it might have been like back in the day. She could see these scientists braving trips outside to maintain the instruments on the antenna, then coming back in for hot coffee while they analysed their findings. She imagined it much like her time in the force: a small unit whose bonds were strengthened by camaraderie.
At least they died together, she thought. It wasn’t much, but it was something. The atmosphere grew heavy and quiet, each person finding something of interest to inspect. Eva moved to the back wall that faced inward to the mountain and scanned across the various reports, graphs, and maps pinned to a board.
Soil (The Last Flotilla Book 2) Page 9