‘He won’t escape from that,’ Frank assured Lauren. ‘He’ll slice through his wrist before he’ll break that plastic.’
‘What about his legs?’ Sean asked. ‘He’ll kick if he gets an opportunity.’
‘Tie them together,’ Lauren ordered. Frank produced a length of rope, and a few minutes later the task was done, the explorer well and truly trussed up.
‘How bad is his head wound?’ Lauren asked Mel. ‘Can you take a look?’
The Capricorn medic made a quick examination of the split in Fitzgerald’s scalp.
‘He’ll live,’ she pronounced, ‘but he’ll wake up with a serious headache.’
‘Should have hit him harder,’ Sean told Lauren.
‘That’s not helpful, Sean,’ she snapped.
Lauren turned to the others, trying to sound rational even though her heart was still racing with shock.
‘All right. Someone wake up Carl. I want everyone to the mess room. I want to brief you on what’s happened here, and we have to make a team decision on what we’re going to do about it.’
They retreated to the mess room table, where Murdo rustled up hot drinks. Mel tended to Lauren’s neck, putting an ice pack against the bruised flesh in the hope of reducing the swelling.
‘So what was the fight about?’ Murdo began. ‘Was he trying to rape you or something?’
‘Take it from the beginning, Lauren,’ Frank told her. ‘It’s time they knew everything.’
Lauren breathed deeply to calm her nerves, then began.
‘We suspect that Fitzgerald might have deliberately sabotaged the satellite comms,’ she told them. ‘There’s a vital chip missing from the transmitter, and I was in his room trying to find it.’
There was a stunned silence as this news sank in.
‘But that’s our lifeline,’ Mel said. ‘Whatever was he thinking of?’
Suddenly, Carl was animated. ‘I bet this has to do with my manuscript,’ he said. ‘I was due to e-mail the first fifty thousand words of my book to a publisher yesterday morning. Fitzgerald must have found out and decided to wipe out the transmitter.’
‘Bit of an extreme measure, wasn’t it?’ Mel questioned. ‘What’s so bad about your book that he’d go to those lengths to stop you sending it out?’
‘All I’ve done is tell the truth,’ Carl said, ‘but the truth and Julian Fitzgerald don’t get along too well. Suffice to say that his glorious reputation will be taking a bit of a knock when my account hits the bookshops.’
‘So, if you’re determined to get the story out, what’s he got to gain by delaying it?’
‘He’s threatening legal action. He’s e-mailed his lawyer in London to get him to put legal pressure on my publishers not to go ahead. It all rests on the pre-expedition contract I signed before we set out. I suppose he’s waiting for his lawyer to check the fine print.’
‘But surely he must have known Frank would spot the satcomm had been nobbled?’ Murdo observed.
‘Not necessarily,’ Frank told him. ‘We had no reason to suspect sabotage, at least not initially. It was only because we checked through the circuit diagram that we discovered the component was gone.’
‘And did you find the chip?’ Mel asked Lauren.
‘Not yet. But as soon as we can move Fitzgerald to somewhere more secure, we’ll go back in and do a fingertip search. But I did find a film which Sean lost at the beginning of the winter.’
The team turned to Sean.
‘I took a roll of stills on the rescue,’ Sean explained, ‘and I tried to process them months ago. But the roll was blank, and I put it down to a camera fault. Now it turns out Fitzgerald switched the film for a blank one.’
‘Why would he steal your film?’ Richard asked.
Sean looked to Lauren and got her confirming nod to continue. ‘Because I took some pictures which I believe might incriminate him.’
‘Incriminate him? How?’
‘There was an emergency box down in the plane. It was packed with food and drugs. One of my pictures showed all the wrappers and stuff.’
Richard was stunned. ‘You’re wrong. There wasn’t any food. We didn’t eat a damn thing until you and Lauren…’
‘Fitzgerald ate the lot,’ Sean told him bluntly, ‘while you and Carl were starving to death. Every time he abseiled down to the plane, he was feeding himself up.’
‘I can’t believe it…’ Richard was dumbfounded. ‘No one would do that … would they?’
Suddenly, Carl was making a curious muffled sound, a sniffling which Lauren at first took for tears, but when he raised his face she saw that it was laughter.
‘None of you have any idea,’ he muttered, laughing insanely. ‘Fitzgerald only ever cared about himself. The man is not to be trusted, take my word for it. But Sean got a picture down in the plane? How beautiful … now we’ve got the proof. We can destroy him with that.’
‘Assuming all this is true,’ Frank addressed Lauren, ‘what the hell are we going to do with him?’
‘He’s dangerous,’ Lauren said, ‘and he’s violent. I don’t intend to give him a chance to hurt any more members of my team.’
‘I think he’s paranoid,’ Carl told the group. ‘I’ve thought that for months. You can’t let him free again … he’ll really hurt someone.’
‘But how the hell are we going to keep him a prisoner in there?’ Frank asked. ‘What about feeding him; what about when he needs the toilet?’
‘We’ll have to construct something better,’ Lauren proposed. ‘Frank, can you strengthen one of the rooms, reinforce it so he can’t get out?’
‘I could do,’ Frank replied after some thought. ‘I’d have to weld up some bars for the window, maybe plate up the door with some four-millimetre steel so he can’t kick it out. It would take me a day or so, but it’s feasible, yes.’
‘Do it. As soon as you can tomorrow,’ Lauren ordered him. ‘We’ll keep Fitzgerald tied on his bed until we can move him into something more humane. Meanwhile, I don’t want anyone going in there. That room is out of bounds except to me and Mel.’
‘I have to tell my editor,’ Richard told her. ‘Put the record straight about that bastard. To think I was setting him up as the great hero. How soon can you get the satellite link fixed?’
‘We’re still missing the vital component,’ Frank told him. ‘It’ll take me another week or so to design a way around it.’
‘In any case,’ Lauren added, ‘I’m not sure I want this story broadcast to the world when I’m just about to announce the results of the scientific work. We’ve already attracted too much sensational publicity thanks to Fitzgerald.’
‘But that’s totally unethical … it’s censorship of the worst kind. I have to tell this story. You must give me that chance.’
‘Winter’ll be over in less than five weeks,’ Lauren told him. ‘We’ll fly you out of here, and you can write whatever stories you like. But for now the satellite link, when and if it’s fixed, remains for my use only … and that’s my last word.’
‘Maybe Fitzgerald was right about you, Lauren,’ Richard told her darkly. ‘Maybe you are a control freak.’
‘Stop it!’ Frank stepped in. ‘It doesn’t help if we start to attack each other.’
‘Sean. Process that film,’ Lauren ordered him. ‘Let’s at least see what was bugging Fitzgerald so much he had to steal it.’
* * *
For an hour they waited while Sean went to the darkroom. He returned with the freshly dried prints and handed them to Lauren. The others crowded round as Lauren flipped through them until she found the shots inside the crashed plane.
‘There’s the food box,’ she said. ‘Sean was right about that, you can clearly see all the wrapping and the empty cans…’
Richard swore beneath his breath as he was handed the prints.
‘And here’s the drugs,’ he said, ‘the drugs which would have saved Carl and me from six days of living hell. Presumably he would have let us die out there a
nd kept them for his own use.’
‘This will ruin him when the story gets out,’ Murdo said, not without relish.
‘Yes,’ Richard added, ‘and the pleasure will be all mine.’
50
Fitzgerald lay spreadeagled on the bed which was his prison and forced his mind to search for a way out.
Early experiments had revealed that his legs were too tightly tied. No amount of movement, of wriggling inside the cords, could loosen the bonds that held his limbs together.
For his left hand, also, there was no hope of freedom; the plastic cable ties were thick enough to resist even the most strenuous pull, the hand held so tightly against the wooden strut of the headboard that any type of movement sent sharp pains into his wrist.
The right hand was different, the cable ties a little looser, enabling the explorer to move his arm a few inches up and down the strut. He considered trying to splinter the wood with his nails, to create a sharp cutting edge with which to saw into the plastic restraints.
Then he made a discovery: just beneath the position in which his hand was locked, a metal plate was screwed into the back of the strut. He figured it was the device holding the headboard to the main frame of the bed.
One of the screws was slightly protruding, the head sharp and burred where a screwdriver had slewed it.
By forcing his arm down, Fitzgerald found he could rub the outside of the plastic ties against the serrated lip of the screw head. Do that for long enough, he told himself, and he could cut through the ties. He worked through the long day, only halting when Murdo came to stuff a sandwich in his mouth.
Many hours’ more concentrated work, biting his lip against the pain from his increasingly tender flesh, gave Fitzgerald a breakthrough: the first of the cable ties sprang open.
Two more to go. Sleep was out of the question even though he guessed it must now be four a.m. or later.
If he could bear the pain, he could get the hand free. Fitzgerald began again.
51
Richard took a surreptitious glance along the corridor to check that no one was watching, then entered the room where Fitzgerald was tied up. He closed the door behind him, slightly guilty already that he had broken his promise to Lauren that he would not try to speak to the explorer.
The things he had learned about Fitzgerald in the last hours made it impossible for him to stay away. There were too many questions burning up inside him.
Richard looked closely at Fitzgerald, feeling his skin creep a little at the sight of the trussed-up figure, his face still bloody from the fight of the previous night. Even tied up as he was, there was something undeniably frightening about Fitzgerald’s presence, a latent capacity for violence which reached beyond the physical limits of his body.
The extraordinary power of his frame was all too evident, even at rest. Richard was no fighting man, and the thought of all that destructive strength let loose was enough to make him shudder.
‘Are you sleeping?’ Richard asked him. ‘Or is that a sham like everything else?’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Fitzgerald did not bother to open his eyes.
‘They developed the film,’ Richard told him. ‘They found it hidden in your room. I’ve got one of the prints here.’
Fitzgerald’s eyes flicked open and locked Richard in a hostile gaze. Now he had the explorer’s full attention.
‘And what does the pretty picture show?’ Fitzgerald sneered.
‘I think you know.’
‘I have nothing to hide.’
‘That’s a lie for a start. This photograph definitely shows an empty emergency ration pack down in the fuselage of the plane. Kilos and kilos of the stuff … and you ate it all while Carl and I were going day after day without food.’
‘I deny it,’ Fitzgerald told him emphatically. ‘The pack might have been empty when it left Ushuaia. I never saw any food down there.’
‘And the drugs?’ Richard continued. ‘The bandages, antibiotics and morphine? How do you explain that, unless you were saving them for your own possible use? You must have known they were there, Julian, and you must have known how desperately I needed them. How could you have watched me go through all that pain when you could have helped me?’
Fitzgerald let his eyes flicker for an instant to Richard’s belt. The Swiss army knife was there in its holder.
‘Without me pulling you out of that crevasse, you’d still be rotting there now with those two pilots.’
‘I know that, I recognise you saved my life,’ Richard said wearily. ‘But that doesn’t stop me from hating you for what you did next.’
‘All you have is Sean’s fantasy version of what he saw down there. How do you know it wasn’t him who found those rations and ate them?’
Richard shook his head. ‘I don’t believe that for a moment. I trust Sean … he’s not the type of person who could do that.’
‘Have you thought about why they are filling your head with all this?’ Fitzgerald asked him. ‘Why they go out of their way to spread all these lies about me? Can’t you see it’s all a smokescreen to cover up for the fact that this base is a failure?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Fitzgerald dropped his voice. ‘You’re a journalist. You have influence. They’re terrified you’re going to discover the truth about Capricorn.’
Richard had to resist a laugh. ‘The truth? What truth?’
‘The whole project is a scandalous waste of time and money. There’s no lake down there, Richard; they’re drilling down into solid fucking ice. They’re spending millions on a false premise, and Lauren Burgess knows it. If you weren’t here, they could cover the whole thing up, make it seem like a test exercise perhaps, but what if you decided to write about it? To make that failure public? How do you think her sponsors would feel? It could destroy her precious reputation overnight … she’d be a laughing stock, and she’d never raise the money for another base.’
‘Nice try,’ Richard told him, shaking his head, ‘but it doesn’t wash. Capricorn isn’t a failure at all; it’s a fantastic success.’
Fitzgerald seemed to sag, his chest sinking slightly as he exhaled long and hard.
‘The problem is this,’ Richard continued. ‘You’ve made me feel pretty foolish. In fact, I’ve never felt more stupid in my life. Back at the beginning of this winter, I wrote a three-thousand-word feature about what a great hero you were, how you saved my life. It was my first front-page byline; do you know how proud that made me? And now I find out that I actually missed the real story … that the real story was how a desperate, paranoid individual was saving himself at the expense of his fellow men.’
‘How do you know you wouldn’t have done the same?’ Fitzgerald asked him. ‘Put yourself first? Don’t you think when it comes to survival there’s something inside all of us which is capable of that?’
Richard was white with rage. ‘No, I do not. I would never let someone starve like you did! I was out of my depth out there, Julian; I desperately needed help, and to think of all those days you didn’t do a damn thing…’
‘I wish I had left you in the crevasse,’ Fitzgerald told him quietly. ‘Saved myself all this bother.’
Richard shifted again on the end of the bed, his anger seeping away.
Just a few inches closer … Fitzgerald had to restrain himself from making the move.
‘I can’t ignore this, Julian. I have to tell this story,’ Richard told him finally. ‘It’s my duty as a journalist. As soon as they get the satellite link back up, I’m going to file a piece which will tell the public the truth.’
‘You mustn’t do that,’ Fitzgerald pleaded. ‘You’ll ruin everything. Let me see that photo properly; bring it closer.’
So close now. Fitzgerald felt the muscles in his right arm tense.
Richard leaned just a few more inches towards the explorer to give him a better look at the print.
Just a fraction more.
‘You were pr
epared to let us starve to death,’ Richard said. ‘Now I’m going to tell that story, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.’
Now.
Fitzgerald’s right hand snaked forward so fast that Richard didn’t stand a chance. The blow was expert, straight to the temple, an instant later Richard was unconscious in the explorer’s arms.
A moment later Fitzgerald was reaching for the knife.
52
Murdo and Sean had stayed up late, taking a couple of beers at the bar as they talked through the events of the day, when Murdo happened to glimpse a flash of light out on the glacier. It was an evil night, the wind blowing twenty to thirty knots, and no sooner had his eyes registered the beam of light than it was gone, swallowed up in the driving spindrift.
‘That’s weird.’ He took his beer and stood by the window, peering out into the storm. ‘I thought I saw a light out near the vehicle shed.’
Sean joined him. ‘Can’t be,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s gone to bed.’
‘No. I’m sure of it. There! That’s it again.’
This time Sean had seen it too, a momentary flickering against a window. ‘Looks like it’s coming from inside the shed,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and check it out; it might be a spark from a wiring fault.’
They dressed as quickly as they could and were crossing to the vehicle shed when they heard the sound of an engine from within. ‘Sounds like a snowcat,’ Sean said, cupping his hand against Murdo’s ear to be heard above the wind. ‘But who in the name of God would be playing around out here at this time of night?’
Sean stood on tiptoe to see through the window, but the glass was too frozen to register more than the fact that there was a light of some sort inside. Murdo and Sean pushed open the door and stopped in complete amazement at what they found. In the corner of the shed, Julian Fitzgerald was siphoning petrol from the main storage tank into a series of jerrycans. Nearby, one of the snowcats was ticking over, the engine stuttering a little as it warmed. Hitched to it was a sledge, piled with food, equipment and an axe.
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