by L. A. Larkin
After the long morning trek down the mountain, and the boat trip to the ship, Luke had been allowed to shower and eat before he was locked in the surgery – one of the few cabins that actually had a key. Luke was amazed to learn that his house arrest was at the request of the Australian Antarctic Research Organisation’s director, Andrew Winchester. Luke had demanded to speak to him, and a conference call was about to start. On the way to the communications room – escorted by Vitaly – they had passed the bridge and overheard the captain and Alrek arguing. Luke stepped onto the bridge, keen to dissipate the row. He could see the veins along Bolshakov’s neck pulsating like tiny worms. Alrek’s wide lips were clamped together and his muscular arms were folded tightly across his chest.
‘Kozel!’ shouted the captain.
Some spittle landed on Alrek’s face and he wiped it away with his sleeve. ‘How dare you insult me!’ he seethed. Alrek had got to know some Russian swear words. ‘I’m following protocols. We have to work with AARO. Wildman is their responsibility, and they must decide how to proceed. It’s not up to us.’
Vitaly moved closer to his captain, ready to defend him if necessary.
‘I captain this ship,’ Bolshakov said. ‘I decide where we go. I say we do rescue.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ Alrek protested. ‘Our guests are due in New Zealand at the end of the week. We are already two days behind schedule. And may I remind you that you are paid to get our guests back there – safely.’
‘I don’t give a shit about the tourists or AARO. It is the rule of the sea. We are the only ship near enough to find this woman. We will rescue her,’ said Bolshakov, prodding Alrek in the chest.
‘Stop this,’ Luke said as he stepped between the two men, and, with firm pressure, pushed them apart. They stared stonily at him. ‘Alrek, I don’t care what you think I’ve done, but a woman’s life rests in your hands. We have to sail to Pine Island Bay and send out a search party.’
Neither man moved.
Luke continued. ‘Let’s get this call over and done with, shall we? Precious time is wasting.’
Alrek shoved past him sourly and left the bridge.
‘Captain, are you coming?’ asked Luke.
‘Nyet,’ said Bolshakov, throwing his arms in the air. ‘They think we Russians are stupid. AARO think Sergei does not know where your SOS come from. AARO say the SOS cannot come from Bettingtons. It must be from Hope Station. But they are wrong.’ Sergei was the ship’s radio operator. It was he who had been listening to the 500 kilohertz maritime distress frequency, out of idle curiosity. ‘The AARO people insult Sergei. So I not waste my time speaking to them.’
With that, Bolshakov stomped away and relieved his second officer of control of the ship. He stood with his arms folded, staring out to sea. In front of him, the grey-painted radar tracked the ship’s course.
‘Captain,’ Luke persevered, ‘I need your help to persuade my boss that we should find Maddie.’
Bolshakov looked at him through bloodshot eyes. ‘Vitaly tell me you are a brave man. He will go with you to search for this Maddie. If you wish, I will give you more men. But I will not speak to the Australian big boss.’
‘Can you get us into Pine Island Bay?’
‘I think, yes. Wind direction is good. It blows much ice out of the bay. This is very lucky.’ The captain grinned and tapped the equipment in front of him. ‘She is an old girl but bloody tough. She will break through the ice.’
‘How long will it take to get there?’
The captain raised a pudgy finger and played with his handlebar moustache. ‘That, my friend, I cannot say. You yakety yak with the big boss. I take us to Pine Island Bay.’
Luke knew that Bolshakov should not alter the ship’s course without Alrek’s agreement. After all, the tour company was paying the captain’s wages. But he was grateful for the captain’s rebelliousness and his old-fashioned heroic ideals. ‘You are a man of honour,’ Luke said.
As he and Vitaly continued on their way to the communications room, Luke stopped in the corridor. ‘Whatever the outcome of this call, I’m going to search for Maddie,’ Luke said. He kept his voice down. ‘Can you get hold of Alrek’s pistol? I lost my rifle in the avalanche.’
‘Da. The pistol belongs to the captain. It is in the safe. I will take it.’
‘Are there any other weapons?’
Vitaly’s leathery face folded into a smile. ‘I will get them,’ he said knowingly.
‘We’ll need a tent, food, radios, head torches, ice axes. You know the sort of thing.’
‘I will prepare,’ said Vitaly, walking away.
In the ship’s communications room, Luke sat down in front of a webcam mounted on a big screen. He exchanged an awkward greeting with the AARO head, Andrew Winchester, and the chief of station operations, Matt Lovedale, who were sitting at a long table in their Tasmanian headquarters.
Winchester, tall, lanky and white-haired, with a neat but nicotine-stained moustache, asked the first question. His voice had that gravelly tone that only a heavy smoker could muster. ‘Luke, can you tell us what happened?’
Luke was desperate to understand why the director believed him a murderer, but he knew he had to demonstrate that he was calm and in control, and not the crazed killer they believed him to be. He spoke quietly, choosing his words with care.
‘Some time after three am, my time, on the sixth of March, there was a fire at Hope Station. It was deliberately lit and they locked us in. Drilled the doors shut. Craig was on fire, screaming. We couldn’t get out. The gas cylinders exploded, killing Blue. Sue was impaled on some debris. Maddie, Tubs and I escaped on snowmobiles, but they shot at us, hitting Tubs. Maddie had a piece of shrapnel in her leg …’
Luke cast his eyes down and squeezed them tight for a moment. He was back in the inferno again – he felt the heat, smelled the smoke, heard the screams. He broke out in a sweat. He forced his breathing to slow; he had to stay in control. Maddie’s life depended on how he conducted himself in this debriefing. Now was not the time to crumble.
Matt Lovedale, whose head was disproportionately large for his body, seemingly reflecting his unusually long list of academic post-nominals, prompted Luke. ‘Why do you think it was arson?’
‘It was arson. The exits wouldn’t open. We saw the intruders when we broke out. They had guns and they used them. I’m talking AK-47s.’
‘Guns?’ asked Lovedale. Luke saw incredulity on both men’s faces.
‘Who?’ asked the director. ‘Who wanted you dead?’
‘You’re not going to like this, given how important our relations are with them, but I believe they were from China. Maddie overheard them speaking Mandarin. She used to live in Hong Kong.’
‘Pity Maddie isn’t here to verify your story,’ said Lovedale.
Winchester shook his head and clasped his stained fingers together on the desk. ‘Luke, I’m sure you’re aware by now that we have good reason to doubt your word.’ Luke was about to interject when Winchester continued. ‘The federal police have been contacted, but as there has never been a murder in the Antarctic before, they are trying to determine the best approach. Needless to say, the police and the Department of Defence want to speak to you, but I insisted that I speak to you first.’
‘Thank you, Director, but I don’t understand how you could possibly believe I would hurt my friends. I’ve been with AARO for seven years. You know me. I’ve saved lives. I wouldn’t kill anyone.’
Winchester’s blue eyes stared coldly at Luke. ‘We know you’ve rescued colleagues before but you’ve also endangered them. We’ve put up with it because your research is outstanding.’ He cleared his throat, like a rake over gravel.
‘I have an email from Maddie to Matt,’ he said, flicking a look at Lovedale, ‘dated the fifth of March, expressing concern over your erratic, uncooperative and unbalanced behaviour. She thinks you are having a breakdown. This opinion is confirmed by Dr Frank Stone in a separate email. He describes your manne
r as “threatening” and “paranoid”. On the seventh I received an anonymous call from someone claiming he was an old ham radio mate of yours. He said he was worried because you told him you were going to burn down the station because you couldn’t stand the idea of spending the winter with “that bitch”. I presume he meant Maddie, since it’s clear from her reports that you two don’t see eye to eye.’
‘Who told you this lie?’ challenged Luke.
‘You tell me.’
Silence.
‘How do you explain all this, Luke?’
If somebody had plunged their hand down his throat and yanked out his voicebox, Luke couldn’t have been less able to speak. Everything that had happened over the last few days hit him all at once: the fire, the deaths, being hunted by killers, the dash across the mountains, his failure to protect Maddie and his burial in an avalanche. All his fight drained away.
He slumped forward and covered his pale face with his battered hands. How could Maddie have thought that about him? Had she been pretending to warm to him all this time because she feared he was a crazed murderer?
How could he explain her emails, indeed? Or the anonymous call?
‘I can’t,’ he said.
T MINUS 1 DAY, 18 HOURS
9 March, 12:00 midday (AEDT)
Wendy Woo said goodbye to the last mourner. It was midday and already a humid twenty-six degrees Celsius. The air-conditioning didn’t work and Jack’s bungalow was an oven so her guests left early. Apart from Anthony Chan, only the caterers were still there, cleaning up after the wake.
Her father had been a popular and respected member of the community. More than sixty people – mainly immigrants like them – had attended the hurriedly organised funeral. Their tributes had been heartfelt. She had been surprised when a wreath arrived from Lenny Reid – the last client her dad had seen before he died. Of course, Reid’s assistant would have ordered the flowers, but still, it was thoughtful.
Wendy shut the flyscreen door, leaned back against the sagging mesh and closed her eyes. Chan, his forehead beaded with sweat, hovered in the narrow hallway, his hands slightly raised, as if ready to catch her if she should fall.
‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked.
‘I feel so alone,’ she mouthed, her words barely audible.
He took her in his arms and she wept.
The funeral had been a blur. It must have lasted an hour but it felt as if it had happened in five minutes. Wendy remembered everyone watching her as she spoke about her dad. They all knew they had fallen out. She had described their arrival in Australia as refugees, and how hard her dad had worked to build his business and to provide her with an education. She talked of his beloved friends, and she’d been careful to mention Anthony Chan, who’d sat in the front row, nodding his encouragement as she read the eulogy.
Her voice hadn’t cracked, though, and she hadn’t cried. She must have appeared pretty cold, but if she’d allowed her eyes to grow watery or her emotion to enter her voice, even for a second, she would have lost control and collapsed. So Wendy let them think she was an ungrateful bitch – as they probably already did. It was her way of getting through the funeral.
As her sobbing subsided, Chan handed her a handkerchief from his top pocket.
‘I must look a mess,’ she said, feeling awkward.
‘You look lovely.’
Her short black Lisa Ho dress, with its beaded semi-circular neckline, was usually reserved for work functions. She remembered her dad asking her why she always wore black. Why not pinks, yellows and greens? At least it had been appropriate today. She squeezed Chan’s hand.
‘I’ll be fine, Anthony. Really. You’d best get back to the office.’
He kissed her on the cheek and shuffled through the front yard to his car. She grabbed a half-full bottle of chilled sauvignon blanc and a glass, and walked into the backyard. It would be cooler under the liquidambar tree.
Settled into a plastic chair in the shade, Wendy could at last think about the post-mortem verdict. The pathologist had stuck to his original conclusion: Jack Woo had died of a heart attack. No poisons. Nothing unusual. No foul play.
One of the caterers popped his head out the door. ‘We’re off now,’ he said. ‘Everything’s cleared.’
Wendy saw them out, leaving the front door open but the flyscreen door locked, and then returned to the garden. She scrolled though the stock market news bulletins on her iPhone. One headline immediately caught her attention: ‘Dragon Resources on verge of big find’. It was all rumour, but the journalist had ‘an insider’ who claimed that Dragon Resources had discovered new oil deposits exceeding thirty billion barrels in an undisclosed location. If it were true, that would make the discovery one of the ten largest oil fields in the world, and new oil finds were unheard of these days.
It occured to Wendy that if she kept her mouth shut, and if Dragon Resources – legally or otherwise – found oil in Antarctica, then the shares currently in the name of Jack Woo Bespoke Tailoring would soon be worth a fortune. They now belonged to her. Farfetched as it seemed, if she simply waited, she would be able to pay off the mortgage and have money left over. She gulped down the wine and poured another.
Would her conscience allow her to do something so very wrong? Dragon Resources was in breach of the Antarctic Treaty. Should she contact the authorities? Increasingly desperate oil companies had been lobbying for years to be allowed to drill there. They’d been like vultures, tearing at the flesh of their governments, threatening the collapse of the world economy if more oil couldn’t be found. Oil was pushing two hundred US dollars a barrel now, which meant that the huge cost of drilling in such a remote place might become economically possible, especially given how difficult the commercial exploitation of oil sands was proving.
What was she thinking? She didn’t need the money. Her dad had only invested in this venture because he wanted to free her mother from Heizuizi. Wendy stared up into the liquidambar’s branches. She had climbed it often in her tomboy teens, entranced by its vibrant orange and red leaves. How many times had she sat in that tree and peered off into the distance, wondering where her mother was? Could she still be alive today?
Wendy licked away what remained of her Gypsy Rose lip gloss. She would do anything to free her mother, and if it meant raising two million dollars, then she would do it. The shares in Dragon Resources could be a way of generating at least some of that two million. She’d talk to Chan in the morning and see if he knew who her father was dealing with at Heizuizi.
She heard the familiar screech of the front door’s flyscreen. She was sure she’d locked it. Wendy shuddered, despite the heat. Someone was in her dad’s house. She grabbed her phone and, holding up the bottle as a weapon, walked towards the back window. Perhaps she was being paranoid? Perhaps the caterers had forgotten something and she hadn’t actually locked the flyscreen at all?
Wendy saw something move in the sitting room and then it was gone. It looked like a man in black, wearing shades and a baseball cap. Had one of the mourners popped back? He had quickly disappeared from view.
Then Wendy heard a crash that sounded as if it were coming from her dad’s bedroom. Terrified, she backed away and ran towards the neighbour’s fence. Despite her dress, she easily clambered over it. Safe on the other side, she dialled triple-zero and requested the police.
Raising her head to look over the fence, Wendy saw a man calmly watching her through her bedroom window. He pointed his finger at her as if it were a gun barrel, then raised it a fraction as if he had fired at her. She ran.
***
Some hours later, after the police had come and gone, Wendy was back in the security of her hotel room nibbling on chocolate to calm her nerves.
Wendy was now more convinced than ever that her father had been murdered. The intruder’s presence was a clear warning. She had been terrified at the time but now she was getting angry. ‘Fuck you!’ she said to the walls. ‘I don’t scare easily.’
We
ndy pulled up the Australian Stock Exchange data to check out Dragon Resources’ share price. Her almond-shaped eyes widened and she sat forward, peering at her smartphone. The company was up over forty per cent since the market had opened that morning. It had received a ‘please explain’ from the exchange, to which it had responded with a vague statement that left plenty of room for interpretation. They were milking the frenzy.
She couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well, I’ll be!’ she said aloud. ‘You were right, Dad.’
If she was going to capitalise, Wendy had to act quickly. She hesitated for a fraction of a second and then rang Anthony Chan and asked him to find the paperwork that proved her ownership of the shares belonging to Jack Woo Bespoke Tailoring. She said she wanted it faxed immediately to her broker.
‘What are you up to?’ asked Chan.
‘It’s best you don’t know.’
At a little after four in the afternoon, Wendy called her broker, who reminded her that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was three hours behind Sydney, though he strongly advised her not to sell yet, believing the shares in Dragon Resources hadn’t peaked.
‘You can’t be sure,’ Wendy replied. ‘This rumour could turn out to be hot air. No, I want you to sell every share immediately.’
Frustrated at having to wait, Wendy went to a café for a strong coffee. The market was in a frenzy of excitement about the company’s mysterious new oil source, and every last one of her shares sold within an hour. She made a profit of almost four hundred thousand dollars. That, together with the money originally invested, gave her just over one point three million. It was bribery money, to free her mother. She didn’t feel good about it.
As Wendy stared at the black stain in her empty coffee cup, she felt guilty. Logging in to her work server, she dug further into Dragon Resources. She found an announcement from a marine engineering company in Zhuhai. The company had been commissioned to build the world’s largest semi-submersible heavy-lift vessel for Dragon Resources. Perhaps the oil was under the bay, rather than the glacier, and they needed to transport a rig?