by Laline Paull
‘Our only army is of butlers, sir.’
‘Then we’re good.’
Sean waited until the door had closed behind him. Kingsmith was watching him.
‘You’re frowning. You didn’t like my little joke.’
‘I just wondered – how did he know you wanted coffee?’
‘Oh, that button thing. I’m not sure I like it.’ Kingsmith’s smile faded. ‘So who’s this anxious pal of yours, and what does he want? Boots on the ground, eyes in the sky?’
‘She’s a woman. And she specifically doesn’t want it to look like that. She – thank you’ – Sean accepted a coffee he did not want – ‘she wants us to offer top-level security to our guests that is flexible and vigilant on Norway’s behalf.’ Kingsmith drank his almost scalding. He chuckled.
‘A private military on Svalbard, with a fluffy green eco-front.’
‘Joe, you’re mocking me.’
‘I’m not. OK, maybe I am, but you are so deadly serious, and this is not the big deal you think it is. But go on.’
‘It’s important to her it’s genuinely our own in-house security. We were going to let clients bring theirs in, with all the bureaucratic hassle that rotating in and out meant – surely this is better.’ Sean watched Kingsmith absorb this. ‘Everything’s more streamlined, it makes our life easier and it adds value to what we offer. Plus we can offer twenty-four seven emergency response and search and rescue.’
Kingsmith chuckled.
‘She’s worried about the Russians.’
‘She calls them the bear next door. Have you ever worked there?’
‘I have pals there, sure. Pals everywhere. But you know me, I like to do things my own way. I’m happy with my patch.’ Kingsmith rubbed his hand over his bald head, gleaming and smooth. ‘So what are they offering you?’
‘Offering?’
‘We don’t spend our own money.’
‘Oh. Flight permits, for a start. Cuts the transport time, makes it much more practical to attend for a day or two. And naturally I build it all into the retreat costs so that everyone saves. From landing at Longyearbyen, all the way through, to airborne en route to wherever next. Midgard handles every detail.’
Kingsmith held a pot of marmalade up to the light.
‘A bitter jelly full of twigs. It’s perverse.’
Sean knew what this was about – Kingsmith wanted him to plead. And if he refused, then later changed his mind, it would mean locating him wherever else he was in the world and doing the whole dance all over again.
‘Joe,’ he said, ‘one of the first things I learned with you is that you can’t work from a place of insecurity. I know it’s not one size fits all; every private military company is different.’
‘Sean boy, that’s not the side of things you’ve ever been interested in. It’s not your strong suit, you’re on the sunny side of the street. You should stay there.’
‘I’m not a kid, Joe. I’ve been asked to do something very important, and yes, it’s a stretch, but not for you. This is what you do, you make places safe. You did it for the New York Times in Basra, you do it for telecom companies in Africa – it’s how the world does business now.’
‘If they can afford it. So, what sort of size are we talking about? What sort of anxieties does your pal have? Maybe she could get in touch—’
‘No. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but it specifically has to come through me, as the British CEO of Midgard Lodge. That’s crucial.’
‘Crucial. I see.’
Sean bore Kingsmith’s long look, willing himself silent. If Kingsmith wouldn’t help him, there were other sources he could tap. But none he trusted so much. ‘Attaboy. But why does your special friend, or friends, trust that you know a single thing about private contracting in the Arctic environment?’
‘I won the bid, I’m having breakfast with you, so I guess I’m qualified.’
‘Hah! Are you taking some kind of supplement I should know about? I’ve never seen you like this.’
‘Carpe diem.’ As Sean said it, he knew it was true. ‘Midgard Lodge is my great opportunity to not only be in the Arctic whenever I want, but also help protect it. And make money. From the time we met—’
‘I know. Obsessed with the ice. But, just to be quite clear: you’re offering me more risk and more work, for nothing?’
‘For the stake you already have, in Midgard. And for honour. To do something worthwhile in this world.’
‘Tell me what they’ve dangled at you. It must be something special.’
Sean said it as casually as he could. ‘A knighthood. I think.’
‘A what? Some bit of ribbon and a fancy name? I hope it comes with a side of real estate. Come on, I thought you hated all that inherited privilege crap.’
‘I do. But you know where I come from. I’ve worked, I’m talented, I pay my taxes and create jobs and wealth – and I want my place at the table. Money’s not enough in this country. Money alone doesn’t get you respect.’
‘You think a bit of ribbon will?’ Kingsmith shook his head. ‘Sean boy, let me tell you something. When I was last in Dallas, I went to that art museum and I saw your painting. The Icebergs, Frederic Church. Saw it with my own eyes, stood in front of it, and imagined you looking at it as a kid. How old?’
‘Twelve.’ Sean felt choked at the thought of Kingsmith doing that.
‘I asked if I could buy it, so I could give it to you.’ Kingsmith looked at him. ‘You know, it is literally priceless – they wouldn’t sell, at any figure. Come on now, don’t get emotional, you know I can’t cope.’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘Good. I only mention it so that you know, I truly do recognise how far you’ve come. My favourite people come from nothing and you’re one of them. You’re a rich man. But if that’s not enough, if you want to bust a gut for a bit of ribbon – OK, to you it’s more than that.’
‘It’s the fitting reward for answering the call. And helping protect the Arctic.’
‘Fine. Each man has his demons or grail or whatever. So if you say you want my help on this, but the rest is all on you, then you’ve got it. OK?’
‘Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much.’
‘Told Tom about this little detail?’
‘Not yet.’ Sean said it easily, but he did not want to meet Kingsmith’s eyes. He hadn’t told him yet; he could do it later.
‘Here’s what I’ll do.’ Kingsmith was looking at his phone. ‘I’ll hook you up with Danny Long. Countryman of yours, but really a global citizen. A very safe pair of hands. Tell him I recommended him.’
Sean’s phone buzzed with the contact. The mention of Tom made him uncomfortable. He would have to find the right moment to explain things to him, but first, he must get things moving.
In 1867, the United States paid the Russian Empire $7.2 million for Alaska (US$123.5 million in 2016), officially ending Russia’s reign over the area. Of this sum, a reputed US$165,000 was supposedly used to bribe senators opposing the purchase, to vote for it regardless. The purchase, made by Secretary of State William H. Seward, was initially ridiculed as ‘Seward’s Folly’, but in 1880 gold was discovered, and in 1890, oil.
13
The plane trees of London form a scattered forest. Pollutant-resistant, their tall deep trunks shed scales of gold, green and grey. Normally they came into leaf in May, but later that February evening as Sean hurried along the South Bank to meet Martine, he noticed they were already tipping green. They were attending a private screening of the 1927 documentary Nanuq of the North, hosted by the Canadian Embassy. He’d seen it a long time ago, when the Lost Explorers’ Society had screened it as a backdrop to a party – but been so drunk he couldn’t remember a thing. Tonight it was the official main event, before the actual one of Arctic networking at the post-show reception.
The audience was seated and the house lights dimmed as Sean apologised and bumped his way along to his seat with Martine. She squeezed his thigh in greetin
g and kissed him. Parch craned round from a seat three rows ahead, and waved to Sean. He mimed a drinking gesture then pointed at his watch. He’d come for gossip from the arms fair.
A woman and three men came on stage. Tanya Tagaq introduced her band, then the big screen flared with sepia light, and the Arctic of 1927 came back to life. Sean jumped as the woman began to sing – if that was what her unearthly keening and grunting sounds could be called.
The Inuit people on the big screen moved in quick jerky movements, familiar in Charlie Chaplin films but disconcerting in an anthropology documentary. Wearing clothes of skin and fur, they bent down to the camera and waved out at the twenty-first century. Sean couldn’t concentrate, because of the noise the singer was making. He vaguely remembered on the invitation that it was with live musical accompaniment, and had expected something worthy in the orchestra pit – not this twisting fury in a long bronze dress clinging to her like fish skin, and whose bizarre sounds agitated him to his core.
The band followed every swoop and dive of her voice. Sean focused on their sound instead of hers – it was human at least, even if its abstraction and runs of sound were not what he would call music, exactly. But the woman’s voice had him pinned back in his seat like an Arctic gale, her body now in spasms so violent he was sure her dress would split any second. One moment she sounded like a bird wheeling in the air, the next, some underwater devil gurgling obscenities.
Her vitality seized his full attention, it was the only way to bear the experience and sit through the film that she prevented him from watching. Sean gave up and stared at her – her strong female shape, her pale flesh gleaming in the stage lights. Her face was broad, her eyes slanted above high round cheekbones. Her long dark hair, which began pinned up, was now coming loose and her performance was more a case of public possession with an audience.
As he stared at her and surrendered to her sound, the singer and the band disappeared, and Sean was with Nanuq the hunter, smelling the mineral scent of snow, narrowing his eyes against the needling wind. His body stayed in its deep leather seat in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, but he was on the great walrus hunt.
Her voice hovered in pent-up excitement with the hunters as they spied the great prey hauled out and resting on the ice, and the drums sizzled their restraint. Tanya Tagaq slid inside her dress as her voice dropped down, coming in to ambush the walrus, closer and closer as the camera inched forward to where the walrus families rest unwitting.
One beast, a big male, is singled out. Nanuq’s spear is pure hunger as he crawls towards the animal, the rest of the hunt behind, crafty and low on many bellies towards the walrus, still blissful on the ice.
A couple of animals raise their heads on lookout, but the hunters freeze faster – and the walrus return to their grooming and nuzzling and rolling together. Sean does not know how tense he is, leaning forward as Nanuq the brave edges forward with his spear, kneels up and in one fluent move buries his harpoon deep into the creature’s flank. It bellows in pain.
On stage, Tanya Tagaq channels the terror and panic of the walrus herd as they stampede into the water for safety, but once there they do not abandon their stricken fellow. He tries to plunge in after them, but the tearing barb in his flesh holds him back, and the hunters come out like wolves. Mindful of his tusks and strength, they too hurl their harpoons into his body – a big bull walrus full of meat and warm blood. They close in on him as he struggles to reach the water, his big eyes rolling in terror. They haul on their lines to drag him away, back from the sea where the herd have all turned and are bellowing to him and watching in horror.
The sweat shines on the singer’s white flesh as she roars the walrus bull’s agony, the drums thunder the passion of the kill as the hunters twist the lines of the harpoons around an axe head buried in the hard ice and four, five, six, seven men strain to pull him in as he roars and struggles for his life. Their numbers bring him down and they drag him back towards the edge of the floe to finish him off. But in the water one cow walrus comes in closer than the rest, at risk of her own life, her eyes wild and riveted on the stricken bull, and Tanya Tagaq channels her too, as the merciless camera goes closer on her face as she watches her mate butchered on the ice floe.
The audience stayed stunned in their seats until Nanuq of the North had finished. Then they found themselves on their feet, roaring in praise and relief, stricken and thrilled by their part in the kill. When it was over, they rushed for the reception, and the drinks.
News of Sean’s Midgard victory had spread. The Canadians greeted him warmly, and Sean inquired after the health of their new ice-breakers. Then as a group of Chinese businessmen approached, the cultural attaché took Martine’s arm and they segued away to greet them. Rupert Parch materialised in her place.
‘Obvs one doesn’t actually enjoy something like that, but dear me, you know you’ve been out. Enjoy the curry, the other day?’
‘Delicious, thank you,’ said Sean.
‘Must have been, as I’m told rather gracelessly to keep my nose out of it now.’
‘So you’re stalking me?’
‘Oh, you know me, I go to as many openings, closings, commemorations, launches, memorials, bar and/or bat mitzvahs, Diwalis, festivals of Eid, Speed – you name it. Protracted throat-singing combined with a very long silent documentary is just another top night out. Look around – this is a Who’s Who of the new Arctic! Listen to that buzz. It’s a blizzard of business cards: each one’s worth tens of millions of pounds.’
Sean saw Tanya Tagaq come in with her band. She was still in the bronze dress, but had wiped off most of her stage makeup. She was immediately surrounded by admirers. He jumped as Martine slipped her arm through his.
‘She’s so intense. But come with me now, and meet my new friends.’
They were as useful as Martine hinted, they knew and admired Radiance, they had been to the Yellow River research base in Ny-Ålesund, they invited Sean and Martine to visit them in China. They had more feeling for Iceland than Norway and more still for the opportunities of Africa – the Arctic was busy and crowded – but they were very keen to be among the first retreatees at Midgard Lodge. In fact, they had bid for it themselves. And then all conversations foundered, because of what was going on in the night sky beyond the glass wall of their reception room.
Three days earlier and ninety-three million miles away, an eruption through the surface of the sun caused a colossal cloud of magnetically charged plasma to burst into the solar system, travelling at a million miles an hour. The cloud spread out into many charged particle streams. Around the time Tanya Tagaq’s shell-shocked audience began colliding with alcohol, one of those cosmic currents discovered the atoms of the earth’s atmosphere.
The smokers outside on the terrace of the Queen Elizabeth Hall shouted out to attract the attention of guests inside, urging them to hurry out. In London’s night sky huge veils of Auroral light rippled green and violet over the city. Cries of delight in several languages went up as a curtain of gold fluttered through the heavens, over the UK and unprecedentedly low latitudes of Europe. The news reported it lasting just over eleven minutes; its like had not been seen since the Carrington Event of 1859. Meteorologists cautioned it was not cause for celebration, but Sean took it as a most auspicious blessing on his new venture.
Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory, which I reared in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections, has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories, and you may be sure of one thing – that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is no getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood.
Sunday, 5 November 1893
Farth
est North: The Norwegian Polar Expedition 1893–1896 (1897)
Fridtjof Nansen
14
Four years later, in Kent, the parish church in the village of Wickton was hosting Tom’s funeral. It was a tiny Saxon structure with an already overflowing graveyard that had taken over a neighbouring field. The car park was on the other side of a fence, and as Sean got out he saw the raw earth pit waiting. Tom’s grave, he forced himself to think, though the words seemed ludicrous. He hurried in to beat the undertakers unloading the coffin, which also seemed completely unconnected with Tom. At least it was proper solid-looking wood, not some frail, terrible wicker thing.
The cold church smelled of stone and tuberose and dusty kneelers. He had come without Martine, glad to plead its small capacity. There were Gail and Rosie at the front, and without thinking, he went up to join them. He saw they had both been crying and wished he had too. They looked at him in surprise as the entrance hymn began, and made room.
On the other side of the aisle, across from him, were Tom’s family – Angela his mother, Granny Ruby, and he presumed, some other relatives, weeping unashamedly as the coffin was brought in and placed on the stand in front of the altar. They did not appear to notice as he came in, and his mind tumbled with how to speak to them afterwards.
I’m sorry I didn’t visit more – I thought it would make it worse to see me – when the truth was that it was unbearable to see them. After the accident, he had gone back to Wickton once, and endured an agonising tea with Angela and her mother-in-law, Granny Ruby, reminiscing about his student days with Tom, Greenland … They had taken out photographs, they had wept – their raw grief tore at his, it ripped at his mind and heart all over again until he knew that all he wanted to do was move on past the pain. That was survival.
Sean stared at the coffin, gleaming and dark and conventional with its brass handles. Tom’s body is in there. He repeated it to himself, hoping he would be overcome with emotion. Behind that wood, under that lid. Is it screwed down? It must be, by now. The priest was speaking; he couldn’t focus on a single word but he could feel the frigid two inches Gail was keeping between them and hear someone sobbing. He needed to see Tom’s body for proof, and now it was impossible.