by Tom Harper
‘And when you found out Hagger had been looking around there …’
Again, that blank look. ‘Hagger never went near Vitangelsk.’
‘It’s around the corner from the Helbreen glacier.’
‘With a bloody great mountain in between.’
He started to get out of his chair, saw me square up and thought again.
‘The only time Luxor Sciences said anything about Hagger was after he died. They suggested removing his notebooks.’
‘I bet they did.’
‘To protect our funding,’ he protested. ‘They didn’t want the scandal to ruin Zodiac.’
‘And how did they know all about that so fast? Did you tell them?’
‘No.’ He scratched his beard again. ‘No.’
Quite suddenly, he dropped his head on the desk and started crying.
‘Jesus,’ I said in disgust.
‘Get out,’ he screamed. ‘Get out, get out, get out!’
There was no way I could shut him up – not unless I clocked him. And if he kept on, someone would walk in in a minute, and then it would take one hell of an explanation. His word against mine – and mine was full of murders, Russians, secret radars and spies. They’d have locked me up in two minutes.
So I left him, weeping on to his desk like it was the end of the world.
Thirty-three
Eastman
It was weird, stepping out of his office. Like waking up after a bad dream. I could hear Danny in the galley cooking lunch; students laughing and joking in the mess. Through the end windows, I could see a bunch of people playing soccer in the snow. They looked like they were having a good time.
I had nothing in common with them.
I went into the bathroom, leaned on the sink and took some deep breaths. I stared at myself in the mirror. You don’t do that too often at Zodiac; I barely recognised myself. My beard had grown full, and my eyes seemed to have shrunk into my head. It reminded me of those old photos you see, guys who got stranded on the ice and had to survive a winter eating their boots. You wonder how they managed when they finally got back to civilisation. One of them shot himself in a hotel room, I seem to remember.
Was Zodiac changing me? For sure. First Greta, then Quam: something was coming out of me that hadn’t been there before. In a place like Utgard, you freeze hard without even knowing it. Maybe I should have popped one of Kennedy’s chill pills.
‘Gotta stay sharp,’ I told the man in the mirror.
Gotta stay sharp, he mouthed back at me.
What to do now? The showdown with Quam should have locked everything in place. Instead, I felt less certain than ever.
He admitted going up to see Hagger on the Helbreen.
He admitted burning the notebooks.
He admitted taking money from Luxor.
So why wasn’t I more sure that he’d killed Hagger and sold us out to the Russians? Was it his sob-story act? Was I that gullible?
And how were we supposed to rub along, now that I’d effectively accused him of espionage and murder? Did we just show up to dinner together and act like it never happened? Or should I go all Mutiny on the Bounty and try and relieve him of his command?
If I did that, who’d be with me?
I picked up a satphone and rang a number in Washington DC. It was against protocol, but only a little. It was also 5 a.m. on the Eastern seaboard, but those guys are open all hours.
‘I need to find out about a company called Luxor Life Sciences,’ I told them. ‘Our Internet went down, so call me back on this satphone.’
I didn’t tell them why I wanted it. You never know who’s listening – especially if down the road they happen to have an antenna as big as a small town. Plus, the guys I was speaking to get paid to figure out that stuff.
You know what’s crazy? After all that, I spent the afternoon catching up on work. It had to get done some time – and I was way behind. Human beings are weird that way: we go through the wildest experiences, then you drop us back in the cage and we go right back on to the hamster wheel.
You remember that tsunami that hit Japan a few years back, the one that knocked out the nuclear reactor? I saw a TV documentary about it, just before I left the States. There was a guy in it: lost his home, his job, his mom, everything. And you know what pissed him off the most? He’d spent the whole afternoon before it hit washing his goddam car. That’s what he couldn’t get over.
I laughed at him, then, but now I know how he felt. If we could see what was coming, we’d all do things differently.
About five of eight, I went along to the mess for Thing Night. No sign of Quam, or Anderson. Or Greta or Fridge. In fact, the whole thing felt kind of flat. Usually, Thing Night happens in July, when Zodiac’s crawling with people. I guess Quam moved it forward to improve morale. Instead, it probably made everyone more depressed over how lame it was.
But people made an effort. Jensen had stuck some badges on his flight overalls so he looked like an air force pilot; Ash had put on a Frankenstein mask and taped drinking straws on to his fingers for claws. He kept complaining he couldn’t hold his drink properly. Danny had tied his hair in a samurai-style topknot, like the cook in the movie who never gets a line; he kept bringing out trays of cookies shaped like UFOs, and miniature green jello shots that smelled of gin.
I sat down next to Kennedy. He’d trimmed his beard into a mad-scientist goatee and powdered it white, and put on a jacket and tie. Which, if you’re in 1949, is apparently what you wear at the North Pole.
‘Where’s Quam gone?’ I whispered to him.
‘I haven’t seen him all day.’
The old RKO logo came on screen, the radio mast blaring out from the top of the world. Kind of appropriate, under the circumstances. Everyone got quiet and gripped their drinks.
I should explain that watching the movie isn’t the point; the point is to drink. The two main characters are Dr Carrington and Captain Hendry. The rules of the game are that every time someone says ‘Doctor’, anyone with a PhD drinks. When they say ‘Captain’, the others drink. And when there’s a reference to ‘science’, or some bogus piece of pseudo-science, everyone drinks.
Every time someone came back from the bathroom, I looked over my shoulder to see if it was Quam.
A phone rang. After just long enough to make me look like an ass, I realised it was my Iridium. I pushed out through the crowd and took it in the hall.
‘We checked up on Luxor Life Sciences,’ said a voice. Those guys don’t do introductions. ‘Nothing funny, no connection to any known Russian organisations. Only flag that came up is the founder died in mysterious circumstances. Plane crash, body never found. British biologist called Richie Pharaoh.’
I remembered Malick had said the guy’s name was Richie. But Pharaoh sounded familiar, too; I couldn’t think where from.
‘There is one link to Zodiac,’ the voice went on. ‘Pharaoh used to be a professor in the UK, at Cambridge University. One of his PhD students was a guy called Tom Anderson.’
I went so quiet they heard it in Washington. ‘You still there?’
‘I got it,’ I said. ‘Get me some background on Anderson, any links to the Russians, anything suspicious.’
I hung up.
Anderson wasn’t watching the movie. I checked his room and his lab: nada. But there was the paper I’d seen that morning: Anderson, Sieber and Pharaoh. I could have kicked myself for not checking on Luxor Sciences earlier.
Maybe he was still in Star Command. I checked the boot room. His coat and boots were gone. So were Greta’s. I opened the door and stuck my head out.
The temperature had dropped after the storm. Cold air pinched my nostrils and made my ears burn. Up on the Lucia glacier, against the black sky, I saw a flashing orange light. I caught it just in time to see the old Tucker Sno-Cat bounce over the ridge and disappear.
Fuck. On the off chance, I checked the field log to see if he’d signed out. Amazingly, he had: I guess protocol dies hard.
/>
If I’d had any last doubts, they vanished when I saw what they’d written. Anderson, Nystrom. Out: 8:30 p.m. Destination: Helbreen glacier.
I ran back to the mess and found Kennedy. In the movie, they’d just reached the bit where Captain Hendry and Dr Carrington fight over whether they should kill the alien or try to talk to it.
‘There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to be studied,’ said the doctor on screen.
‘To science,’ everyone cheered. Luckily, Kennedy was on Coke. Probably the only sober man in the room.
‘Come with me,’ I told him.
The time it takes to get dressed at Zodiac, I thought I’d burst with impatience. Kennedy was even slower. I stood in his room, watching him pull on his two pairs of long johns and his pants, buttoning his shirt, finding the right sweaters.
‘You don’t need all that,’ I said.
Kennedy ignored me. And you know what? He was right. You take shortcuts up there, you die. Anyhow, a snowmobile can outrun the Sno-Cat, easy. We’d catch them up.
It must have been twenty minutes before we’d got ready. In the mess, I could hear everyone shouting along with the movie’s last line. ‘Watch the skies! Watch the skies!’
We grabbed a couple of rifles and ran down the steps to the snowmobile park. Predictably, just when I needed to go fast everything went to shit. I flipped the choke, pulled the starter cord but nothing happened.
I patted my pockets. ‘Goddam it,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I forgot my satphone.’
‘You’d better get it,’ said Kennedy.
And then the Platform exploded.
Thirty-four
USCGC Terra Nova
Franklin was on his feet. He crossed to the phone on the wall and dialled Santiago.
‘You still got the guard on Anderson’s room?’
‘Affirmative, Captain.’
‘Page him to tell him I’m coming.’
On the bed, Eastman had sat up. His hungry, hollow face stared at Franklin like the grim reaper.
‘Anderson’s here?’
‘We found him on the ice.’
‘You locked him up?’
‘He’s secure.’
‘I hope you chained him down.’
‘I’m going to check on him now.’
Eastman swung his legs off the bed and stood up. The blankets fell in a heap on the floor. ‘I want to see that cocksucker.’
Franklin pointed to the IV drip. ‘He’s going nowhere. You need to take it easy.’
‘Fuck easy.’ Grimacing, Eastman ripped off the Elastoplast strip and pulled the needle out of his arm. Blood welled out of the hole but he didn’t seem to notice. The tube dangled limp, oozing fluid on the floor.
‘He’s a spy who damn near murdered every man on Zodiac to cover his tracks. You bet your ass I’m coming.’
Franklin didn’t like to think how many regulations he was breaking, bringing a hypothermia patient through his ship in bare feet and a smock. Then again, if it turned out he’d unwittingly harboured a mass murderer working for the Russians, he wasn’t going to be short of explaining to do.
‘Did you find Greta?’ Eastman must barely have been able to stand upright, but he never dropped a step back.
‘Not yet. It was one in a million Anderson found us.’
‘Bullshit. You really think that? You were his way out. Heroic survivor, walking across the ice. No one left to spill his secret. He knew exactly where you were. If you search, you’ll probably find he ditched that Sno-Cat a half-mile from your boat. Unless he drove it into a hole in the ice.’
‘What about Greta?’
‘Maybe he killed her too. No witnesses.’
‘My pilot reported he’d heard something that sounded like an emergency beacon out on the ice. I sent a crew to take a look. Could be Greta.’
‘I hope you sent them armed.’
Eastman put his arm to his mouth and sucked off some blood from the IV hole. Franklin waited for him at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Suddenly, his pager started buzzing. Before he could look at it, someone burst through the door on the deck above and came sliding down the stairs three at a time.
Only one man aboard the Terra Nova hit the stairs that hard.
‘Ops?’
Santiago came around the corner, swinging himself on the rail for maximum velocity. He stopped a couple of inches short of the Captain, breathing hard.
‘What is it?’
‘Anderson’s gone.’
Thirty-five
USCGC Terra Nova
The crewman sat on the bed with red welts burned around his wrists. White threads stuck to his cheek where Santiago had ripped off the surgical tape that Anderson had used to gag him. None too gently, Franklin guessed.
‘He said he needed the head.’ The crewman rubbed the back of his head and winced. ‘Next thing I knew, I was tied to the chair with my own belt.’
‘He can’t have gotten off the ship.’ Franklin looked out the porthole, almost by reflex, as if he expected to see Anderson running by. ‘Get the Doc up here to check that bump on your head, and pipe General Emergency. I’m going to the wheelhouse.’
Word spread fast on the Terra Nova. All his officers were already on the bridge, waiting for him. Glad it wasn’t them who had to take the PA.
‘All hands, this is the Captain. We have an escaped detainee aboard our ship. His name is Tom Anderson. He may be armed and he is certainly dangerous. I’m initiating a lockdown, and a search of the ship as per our evacuation drill. Use extreme caution.’
He paused, then added: ‘If you can hear this, Tom Anderson, I advise you to surrender yourself. You cannot escape.’
He hung up the mic and turned to Santiago.
‘Get the helo airborne and fly a SAR pattern centred on the ship.’
‘You think Anderson could have run for it?’
Franklin shrugged. ‘He got here, didn’t he?’
The wheelhouse emptied. Franklin sat down in his chair, staring out the windows at the panorama of ice. Anyone who made captain had learned to listen to his ship: even up here, he could hear the urgency of his order spreading through the Terra Nova. A faster rhythm, the vibrations of doors slamming and boots running. He could pick them out like an astronomer reading the stars through the fluctuations of radio waves. And all the while, beneath everything, the sawtooth rise and fall of the prow obliterating the ice.
‘There’s a good lead ahead,’ said the bosun’s mate on ice watch. ‘We should be able to get some speed up soon.’
Franklin nodded. He looked at Eastman. ‘What happened then? After the explosion?’
Eastman shivered. One of the crew brought him a space blanket and wrapped it over his shoulders, a silver cloak that made him look like some alien overlord.
‘They lit up Zodiac like the fourth of July. Oil barrels packed underneath, and all the blast cord we used for seismic work. With everyone packed into the mess for Thing Night, no one had a chance. Even if they’d survived, all the ECW clothing burned up in the Platform. So did the radios, the Iridium phones. Anderson took care of everything. If Kennedy and I hadn’t gone out when we did, no one would ever have known.’
‘Shit.’ What else could you say?
‘A disaster like that ought to be impossible. We keep emergency supplies cached all around the base – food, clothing, radios. That was the first thing we looked for, even while the Platform was still burning. All gone. Anderson must have cleaned them out.’
‘Survivors?’
‘The Platform was burning so hot, you couldn’t get within fifty feet of it. Fuel drums exploding, throwing off pieces of metal – rip your head off. One cut Kennedy’s arm. No one could have survived.’
He stared at Franklin, like it was the most important thing in the world.
‘No one could have survived.’
‘Got it.’
‘I don’t know what bad things you’ve done in your life, Captain, but if
you ever die and go to hell, it can’t be worse than that. The Platform burning, the snow in the smoke. Me and Kennedy running around like chickens, digging up the caches, one after the next, finding everything gone. We must have spent a half-hour trying to get the snowmobiles started before we figured out Anderson had taken out the spark plugs. At that point, we were pretty fucking sure we were gonna die. And not quick, like the others, but slow, hungry and cold.’
The space blanket crinkled and rustled.
‘The weirdest thing was, it all happened in broad daylight. You think bad things happen at night, and maybe the sun’ll come up and things’ll get better. We didn’t even have that.’
He took a cup of coffee that someone had poured him.
‘Anderson came back with his Russian friends. A couple of snowmobiles – they must have stashed them someplace else. Looking for survivors, I guess. Me and Kennedy hid in the mag hut, only place that was intact.’
He stared into the cup of coffee. ‘I thought we were dead when Anderson opened that door.’
‘He found you?’
‘If I hadn’t busted my leg, I’d have launched myself at him. Instead, I just huddled in the corner. I swear he looked right at me.
‘Then he went away. It’s dark in there, and bright outside; maybe he didn’t see. We heard some shots—’
‘My crew found a shell casing.’
‘Then there was some shouting. I don’t know what that was about. After a while, I heard a snowmobile start up. I dragged myself to the door and peeked out, saw someone heading out on to the ice. Big guy.’
‘Not Anderson? He’s big.’
‘Not like this guy. I don’t know where Anderson had gone, couldn’t see him. After that, nothing happened for a while. I almost went out, but I didn’t like the fact I hadn’t seen Anderson or Greta leave. And I was right. After an hour, something like that, I heard the Sno-Cat come back. Greta poked around a little – didn’t find us – and then she rode off on the second snowmobile, following the tracks.’