by Andy McNab
A forward bulkhead door was wrenched open, and we stepped into an empty space lit by ultra-bright strips. It was about three metres wide at the threshold, then narrowed. I noticed a couple of coiled ropes where it came to a point, their tails disappearing through a couple of holes in the deck. We were in the cable locker, right at the front.
I could feel the bow rise, ride over the next ridge of solid ice, and crash down through it. And I could also feel the gentle right-hand curve that the vessel was making.
The walls and ceiling of this compartment were dark red, and so was the thick industrial linoleum under our boots. I hoped it wasn’t to camouflage the blood.
The bulkhead door slammed shut behind us, and one of the levers slid its locks into place with a loud metallic clunk.
Rune lost no time in invading my personal space. ‘Nick, I know—’
‘Shut it!’ I shook him off with my shoulder and got eye to eye. ‘Shut the fuck up.’
I scanned the place for any indication of CCTV, microphones, anything that meant someone was watching or listening to anything potentially more interesting than the creaks and groans and rasps of steel grinding through the Arctic pack. All I saw was a speaker, probably a Tannoy.
Then I thought, Fuck it, I’ve done nothing, the team have done nothing – except to be mad enough to try to ski to the North Pole. I’d been a dickhead for listening to Cauldwell in the first place. We’d left Half Bear and Watch Man under a truck. But that had nothing to do with this.
I moved my mouth closer to Rune’s ear. ‘What? What is it?’ Then I turned my head so he could do the same into mine.
‘I know this ship. The Lisandro. It’s an American exploration vessel. Scientific.’
We started to play mouth to ear.
‘So what’s it doing ferrying an execution squad? What’s that about?’
‘I don’t know, Nick. But the ice must be getting so thin. This ship shouldn’t be able to get this far north so early in the year.’
I moved my head so I could get a good look at his face to reassure myself that he and I still lived on the same planet. ‘What are you on about? Mate, I think you’d better stop thinking about death of the ice and all your eco-warrior shit right now, and start thinking about our deaths – that’s you, me, the team. Didn’t you see what happened back there? You think we’re plasticuffed and locked in here because they don’t want us to hurt ourselves, to get our fingers caught in the doors? What the fuck do you think’s going on?’
Rune looked dazed, like a kid who’s just been told that Father Christmas doesn’t really exist. His duvet rustled as he tried to adjust his hands behind him. Maybe his years on the eco picket lines had warped his sense of reality. Perhaps they had once persuaded him of his own ability to influence a situation – even one like this. Not any more, though. He was taking shorter and more hesitant breaths. He was flapping big-time.
‘Rune, slow down. Calm. Tell me what this boat does.’ I thought he was about to cry. ‘Deep breath. What does this boat do?’
I shoved my ear back to his mouth, so he didn’t even have to think about moving.
‘It tries to locate oil fields by seismic blasting … compressed air detonations close to the sea bed … They reveal the location of oil fields maybe thousands of square miles across. It does terrible damage to the ecology of the ocean. The sound they produce underwater is approximately four times that of a jet engine. It can stun and damage the navigational senses of sea life for hundreds of kilometres around. It’s killing—’
I stepped away before he started to cry. Tears of distress, tears of rage, whatever. ‘That’s enough, mate. Now’s not the time.’ I had to take a few deep breaths myself to get my head around this. ‘OK, so tell me about your so-called monitors. They’re not about the ice getting fucked up, are they? They’re not saving the world. I’m guessing they do exactly the same shit as this ship does.’
I let that sink in, but I didn’t give him long.
‘Rune, you have to understand that now is not the time to worry about a shoal of cod getting home in time for tea. The monitors – are they looking for oil? Looking for gas? What are they looking for? They’re fuck-all to do with the ice, aren’t they?’
Rune had started to shake his head, not bothering to hide the tremor in his voice, but still trying to hold back the tears. ‘Nick, you have to believe me. I only found out last night what they were about. These things … they send signals. They work their way through the ice floes, they penetrate the seabed. And yes. They’re doing the same thing as this ship’s doing.’
‘Rune, you must have known something was wrong from the start. But you still did it anyway.’
‘Cauldwell made me. I had to do as he asked. I had no choice. My debts, I couldn’t … I told myself it was the lesser of two evils.’
‘Know what, Rune? I don’t care – all that’s history.’
But I was just as guilty of self-deception as he was.
‘Nick, they are Russian monitors. They are so sophisticated, so advanced, it makes this ship look like something out of the days of sail. I’m sorry, Nick. I’m so sorry …’
He couldn’t control his tears now. They were soaking the front of his duvet. There was no way he could wipe his face; he had to let them fall.
‘I’m so sorry. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have told you. Last night, I would—’
I cut him off. ‘It wouldn’t have changed anything. And, besides, it’s not your fault, it’s mine. I should have warned the team about this shit as soon as it started to go wrong.’
I let him get on with his crying. So all this shit really was about the RPG bling, and the Americans wanting to stop the technology doing its job at source because they wanted to win this war. Because they wanted to win every war – but, then, didn’t all sides? They wanted to stop them being used, but they also wanted to get possession of them – find out how the things worked, probably reverse engineer.
All the sweatshirted techies in the ISO containers must have been involved. As soon as they pinged one in action, they were on it. There was no way they were going back empty-handed. But so what? It was done. They’d got what they wanted. All I cared about right now was what was going to happen to us. And where was the rest of the team?
I leaned against one of the red steel bulkheads and suddenly felt incredibly, numbingly tired. I slid down to the deck and just sat there, losing myself among the vessel’s vibrations as it pushed forwards, rising and dipping and continuing to carve its way through the ice.
I told myself I might as well rest as much as I could in the warm. Who knew how long we’d be there? Who knew what was going to happen next?
Behind my back, my hands were swelling, with the restriction of blood, and they were overheating inside my gloves. I tried to flex them, but part of me welcomed the pain.
I watched Rune pacing up and down, his hands tied behind his back. He no longer tried to control his sobs, and his head jerked up and down each time he drew a breath.
After five or ten minutes of this, I heard the lever slam on the other side of the bulkhead door, and it was thrown open.
There were three bodies on the other side of it, and the only one to step through was Munnelly. He pointed at me, and jerked his thumb. ‘Stand up.’
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I started to lever myself off the floor, turning and shifting onto my knees, then slowly pushing myself up the wall.
Rune wanted Munnelly’s attention. ‘Please …’ His face was blotchy and wet with tears, snot and saliva.
Munnelly waved a dismissive hand. ‘Shut up.’
It really wasn’t Rune’s day.
‘But I’m—’
Munnelly sighed. ‘I know who you are. Go over there, in the corner – now.’ His tone was crisp, but not overly threatening. It was more like he was sending a kid to the naughty step.
Rune finally got the message. Now it was my turn.
‘You, you stand there too.’
He made sure I was complying, then pushed the door shut.
I joined Rune at the sharp end. The noise there was outrageous. I felt for a moment like they were using my head to beat a path through the ice pack instead of the bow.
We both turned as Munnelly rotated the drop-down handle that controlled the internal latch, then turned to face us. He seemed distracted, but I didn’t think that would make much difference to us. We were still plasticuffed. And he was the boss.
He looked down at his boots, tapped some ice off the toes, and looked up again. His eyes bored into Rune. ‘You …’
The icebreaker lurched, then settled, and lurched again. The hull must have been massively insulated, but the squeal of tortured metal echoed in my head. We must have hit another pressure ridge.
Munnelly realized that unless we were going to shout our way through this interrogation, it was going nowhere. He beckoned us forward, but not so far that I could charge into him.
‘Tell me how Cauldwell got you onto the ice. What did he say about the two men he sent with you?’ He gave a dismissive wave. ‘And about the cylinders? I want you to tell me everything. Don’t lie to me. Just take a breath, know that I need to know, and tell me. Now.’
Rune’s voice went up an octave. He babbled the same stuff he’d told me. That he was forced into it because his business had gone bust, that he was in debt big-time. Cauldwell had told him these men were going to come along and dig some monitors into the ice. Rune was the front for it, so it looked eco. That was all he knew.
Munnelly leaned against the door, one hand in his pocket, the other stroking his beard. His attention didn’t seem to be on either of us. He glanced down at the floor, tapped a boot occasionally, like he’d spotted another tiresome speck of ice he needed to shake off.
Rune stopped and sniffed, trying to sort out the snot pouring from his nose. His beard glistened with it. At least he’d stopped crying.
Munnelly stayed where he was, head down, dipping his toecap in and out of the puddle of water from his boot ice. It was impossible to know what was going on in there. I couldn’t see his face, just the top of his head.
‘But you do know more than that, don’t you? You do.’
It was difficult to hear what he was saying over the background noise now. His voice was low and slow.
It took a second or two for Rune to process the question.
‘I promise I know nothing – nothing more. Please, I—’
Munnelly raised his head, then a weary hand. ‘Stop. You knew what Cauldwell was doing. You knew what those so-called monitors were capable of doing. You knew where those two men came from. You knew. Yet you still carried on, didn’t you? You don’t come out of this with an ounce of dignity. You’re supposed to be fighting the good fight. Devoting your life to getting in the way of people like me. Where the fuck are your principles? Where’s your belief? You’re nothing but a husk of a man, held together by fake principles and a handful of dollars. You knew a lot more, and still you didn’t refuse. Shame on you.’
Munnelly found his toecaps a lot more interesting than us again. He shook his head slowly with almost headmasterly disappointment. I had to agree with him. Rune was a nice man, but the world was full of nice men. He’d folded really quickly for cash and an easy way out of the shit. That didn’t make him bad, just weak. But the fact was, the strong would always prey on the weak.
Munnelly snapped upright and looked directly at Rune. I had a clear view of his face for the first time. The disappointment was genuine: he looked betrayed.
‘You may be on the wrong side of this war, but at least the people I’m fighting against, they have conviction, and that I have to admire. So I guess that means I do not admire you.’
Rune was shot to bits. He slouched beside me, head down, sobbing openly again.
Munnelly turned to me. ‘And as for your story, Nick. Let’s see if you’ve got any dignity. Let’s see if you believe what you’re fighting for.’
He folded his arms, and waited.
I shrugged. ‘I’m not fighting for anything. I’m not fighting against anything. I was asked to come and look after a team of ex-military amputees. To help them make it to the North Pole.’
I mimicked his tone. Low, disappointed.
Munnelly pursed his lips. ‘But, Nick, you know it’s more complicated than that, don’t you?’ He massaged his temples with his fingertips, deep in thought. ‘Help me with this one, Nick. I’m here, like the rest of us on board this ship, trying to do my job. Trying to make sure that America, the West, whatever you want to call it, gets a fair share of what’s under here.’
He tapped the flooring with the toe of his boot. ‘There’s a war going on down there, right beneath us. We both know that. And it’s getting messier and bloodier by the day. But I try to do it in a way that means it doesn’t escalate. None of us wants it to get completely out of control, do we? Neither side wants a full-scale war – real people getting hurt, killed.’
I guessed he counted the Quislings as not real people. I had to agree on that one.
‘It’s not good if one side starts to get the upper hand, in this quiet but grubby war we’re engaged in. The other side has got to make sure that doesn’t happen. As long as we both come out about fifty-fifty, everybody gets their share of whatever is buried beneath us. Digging mass graves is never the answer. I’ve got a role to play in stopping that happening. And you have as well, Nick.’
I nodded slowly. ‘I’ve been learning more about this shit every day. But I didn’t come here to do the digging. I came up here to help the team. I guess I made the wrong call when I decided not to share with them what I was learning. All they want to do is get their dignity back, to try to feel as good as they used to. To be back on top of their game. And you know what? They were all right until that Enstrom appeared.’ I paused. ‘Where are they? They OK?’
He dug his right hand into his yellow duvet for a packet of lozenges. He took one out and peeled it. The ritual got his full attention. ‘Don’t worry about them. I really wish they’d made it to the Pole, that it hadn’t turned out like this. But let’s not kid ourselves. You used them. And now we have a situation here. You’ve made our lives – and theirs – very, very difficult.’
He sucked so hard on his lozenge that I thought he was going to swallow his tongue.
‘We both know we’re fighting a covert war here, Nick. But you and Cauldwell, what you’ve done is brought some real people into it and put them in a very precarious position. And that could be dangerous for all of us. I’ll be honest with you. I’m not yet sure how we can deal with it.’
Something else seemed to fly into his head. He stared at me, jaw working overtime. ‘Do you know what I find so … wrong? No, not wrong, more … despicable. That someone could put their son in danger like that. His own son. And you let it happen.’
He balled the lozenge wrapper and flicked it towards us.
‘So this is what I want to know, Nick. When did Cauldwell get you involved with Armancore? What other work has Cauldwell been doing for Armancore? These are very simple questions, Nick. Think. Who are Cauldwell’s contacts, in Armancore and in Russia – and anywhere else? I need to know these things, Nick. And you need to tell me.’
Genuine disgust was etched on his face as he carried on sucking, and it had nothing to do with the lozenge. The irony of what he called the ‘situation’ wasn’t lost on me. Having spent a lifetime in the shit, I was now about to have to take the pain for someone else’s dishonesty. Fuck it, I didn’t care. However much I’d tried to convince myself that my world could be divided up into neat packages of good or bad, light or dark, white or black, most of it was still lost in shades of grey.
‘Look, Mr Munnelly – it is Munnelly, isn’t it? I know nothing. Really. I was called in by Cauldwell to help with the team. Encourage them. Protect them. Look after them. And that’s all. You’ll have to ask him.’
Munnelly screwed up his face, ran a hand over his beard again, and finally crun
ched into the sweet. ‘We tried that.’ He let the statement sink in for a second or so. ‘Nick, think about your own safety – but, more importantly, think about the team’s safety. I will find out what you know – one way or another.’
I tried to keep it calm and monotone. ‘Munnelly—’
His hand shot up, palm outwards. ‘Enough. I know you’re no choirboy, Nick. The Good Samaritan act doesn’t wash with me. We had each other’s measure on the flight in, didn’t we? I saw the look in your eyes. You saw the same in mine. I know all about your SF background with Cauldwell. I know that you live in Moscow. And I’m talking Moscow, Russia, not Moscow, Idaho. Russia, Nick. Ring any bells?
‘The rest of the dots are pretty easily joined. If you’re not going to help me, you’re not going to help yourself. And, worse still, you’re not going to help the team. We are at war here. Make no mistake about it. And you need to help me stop this thing escalating. Do you understand me?’
He turned his back on me.
His hand was about halfway towards the door handle when there was a deafening metallic boom. The whole supposedly watertight compartment shook. It was like our car had just been rammed by a truck. Even the bulkheads got whiplash. All three of us were thrown to the deck. The strip lights went out. A split second later, emergency lamps glowed red from the walls.
The air filled with klaxons.
I lay on my side, tucked in my chin and raised my knees as close as I could to my chest, in case there was another bang immediately.
Then I raised my head and rolled onto my knees. Munnelly was clutching his left temple. The shunt must have thrown him against the bulkhead door. He’d taken a hit. He wasn’t getting up as quickly as I was.
I yelled at Rune. He was still on lying on his side.
The Tannoy made soothing noises from somewhere above us. The voice was so calm it could only have been a recording. It ordered the crew to shut down the engines and go to emergency stations.
I got to my feet at the same time that Rune did, and realized that the ship had stopped. I reached the door, turned my back to it, and lifted the latch. Munnelly was still down, trying to recover. Blood was seeping through his fingers as he clutched the side of his head.