Thirst
Page 23
There was a quote from the Hood Group’s Chief Investment Officer, who had bragged about how he would turn around the company’s fortunes and steer it to a new, highly profitable future. There was a photograph. She enlarged the image. Those eyes … She knew those eyes. Fear masked by arrogance.
A shriek escaped her mouth, her hand shot up and the coffee cup flew to the pavement and smashed. ‘No, no,’ Wendy cried. ‘Please, God!’
She knew the eyes, but she didn’t know the name Robert Zhao. Those eyes belonged to Zhao Sheng, General Zhao’s only child. He must have changed his name.
The General had tortured and imprisoned her mother. Had the son, Robert, killed her father to protect his Antarctic venture? No, the boy she had met could not have done that. But what kind of man had he become?
‘Are you all right?’ asked the waitress, picking up the shattered cup.
‘I’m sorry – can I have another?’ Wendy stammered.
She googled Robert Zhao. Rich, respected and feared, he was a top dog in the world of private equity, a pillar of Hong Kong society and a supporter of worthy causes. But would he sanction murder? Would he come after her too?
Murder was more his father’s style. Wendy struggled to control the hatred she harboured for General Zhao. Sweat dripped down her temples. Her father was dead but her mother might still be alive. She had to know.
Placing her life on the line, Wendy sent Robert an email at the Hood Group. She signed it ‘Woo Huo’. He would recognise that name. They shared a terrible secret.
T MINUS 1 DAY, 12 HOURS, 48 MINUTES
8 March, 11:12 pm (UTC-07)
Robert brooded over his father’s double-cross like a scab that had to be picked. He had discovered that Captain Wei and a much larger band of explosives experts had spent the ten weeks before his arrival at the camp laying explosives along the Fitzgerald Fissure. That team had left. After Robert’s arrival onsite, Tang and Li kept a surreptitious eye out for any signs of malfunction.
Project Eclipse had a separate master controller and five signal relay boxes placed inside the fissure at four-kilometre intervals along the length of the crevasse. The electronic detonators were programmed to send a warning message if there were any problems. These Wei’s team had secretly fixed while pretending to be working on the water project. Robert had been well and truly hoodwinked. Nobody at Dragon Resources had dared to warn him. They knew only too well how vengeful his father was. Robert would deal with those executives later. Most importantly of all, he would make his father pay.
But for now, he wanted to be satisfied that this new venture – mining bastnäsite – was as big as the General had boasted. He couldn’t allow emotion to get in the way of business. His team at the Hood Group had sent him data on the rare earths industry, and he had received the investment proposal from his father – both as encrypted emails. After several phone calls, he made his decision.
‘I’m in,’ he emailed General Zhao. ‘But dump your investors. You will do this with the Hood Group alone. My people will send the papers.’
He was distracted by an incoming email. The sender’s name, Wendy Woo, was unknown to him but the subject caught his eye: Woo Ling. Oh yes, he remembered her.
Robert’s right hand trembled as he opened the email and saw who it was from: Woo Huo, the daughter. Wendy must be her Western name. All his fury at his father faded. His brow uncreased and his face softened. He felt compassion, an emotion he hadn’t allowed himself to experience for a long time. He remembered her terror and his powerlessness to protect her. He would never forget her screams. Why had she contacted him after all these years?
He breathed deeply and read through the email.
Robert
My mother, Woo Ling, was arrested twenty years ago for practising Falun Gong. You know the rest. I believe she may still be alive and imprisoned at Heizuizi Women’s Forced Labour Camp in Jilin Province. You are now a man of considerable power and influence and I beg you to help me locate and free her. You owe me that much, Robert. I have never spoken to anyone of that terrible day.
Woo Huo
Her email address indicated she was probably living in Australia. He hoped she had made a good life for herself there. He lit a cigarette, but after one drag he left it in the ashtray.
Robert knew he should not reply. There must be nothing to link him to that family. It was exactly the kind of scandal he had engineered to destroy his own rivals. And he knew he could expect no better if the truth should come to light. But if there was one moment in his life that Robert allowed himself to regret – and regret was a luxury for losers, he knew – it was that terrible day when Huo’s mother was arrested. None of it would have happened if his father hadn’t hated Falun Gong so intensely.
From his clothes bag, Robert took a rolled-up velvet cloth the size of a placemat. He laid it out flat and touched a lock of perfectly straight black hair, tied in a white ribbon. He stroked its softness, careful not to pull any of the delicate strands from the ribbon. It was his mother’s.
‘Father blamed them,’ he said aloud. ‘But he drove you to it.’
She had lived in fear of her husband and sought solace from her miserable existence by secretly joining a small group of Falun Gong practitioners. But, ultimately, what drove her to suicide was the cruelty inflicted on Robert by his father. If she tried to stop Robert’s beatings, she received them instead. She’d fallen into a deep depression and hanged herself in the kitchen.
Robert lifted his crippled left hand. ‘He caught you teaching me the piano – do you remember, Mother? I was seven. You gave me lessons at school so he wouldn’t know. My best times. I remember your smile. But someone betrayed you.’
He tried to straighten his damaged fingers, using his other hand. His own smile faded as he remembered the General’s anger.
My son is going to military school. Music is for girls, not men! Never again!
‘Remember, Mother? That’s when he smashed his revolver down on my hand, just to be sure I never played again.’
Robert picked up a small hand mirror and stared at his face in the glass, then slung it across the tent. It bounced off the tent wall and shattered on the hard floor.
‘You left me! Alone with him.’
He still had her suicide note. If his father had found her first, the note would have been destroyed. But Robert had discovered her when he came home from school. He’d instinctively known to take the letter, lying on the floor beneath her dangling feet.
Robert drew hard on his cigarette, then glanced back at the email illuminated on his laptop screen. Woo. Hadn’t his father sent the assassin, King, to deal with an Australian tailor named Woo, who’d discovered their Antarctic project? It was a common name. Still, was it possible that their lives could be so intertwined that, yet again, the Zhaos had killed another Woo?
Woo Huo had kept their secret. He owed her the truth. He would choose his words carefully so as not to implicate himself. She would understand his meaning.
‘It’s too late,’ he typed. ‘So very sorry.’
T MINUS 1 DAY, 12 HOURS, 34 MINUTES
8 March, 11:26 pm (UTC-07)
Luke was woken by Alrek, who shook him brusquely, told him to dress and then escorted him to the comms room. On the screen, a dishevelled Lovedale was tapping his fingers as he waited for Winchester to join him. It was 5:26 pm of the following day in Tasmania.
‘Matt, what’s happening?’
‘We must wait for Andrew,’ Lovedale replied.
‘What’s the emergency response team doing?’ Luke probed.
‘The team’s in place but we can’t rush into this,’ Lovedale said. ‘We’re talking to the Brits and the Yanks to see what they can do. You’re on the only ice-breaker in the area. The director, the Department of Defence and the tour operator have to agree if the Basov should get involved.’
‘Get involved? Christ!’
‘Calm down, will you?’
Alrek stood, ready to escort him out.
‘Gone for the winter. Anyway, you don’t have a cleared runway.’
‘Get the SAS, then. They can fly to McMurdo, refuel and parachute in.’ Luke was growing more agitated.
‘Luke, you need to focus on clearing your name.’
‘I don’t give a shit about my name. We should be looking for Maddie. Right now!’
Lovedale folded his arms across his chest. ‘Leave it to us, Luke.’
Luke sighed. If they didn’t trust him, they wouldn’t share their rescue strategy with him. He understood that. ‘Those emails are fake,’ he said as calmly as he could. ‘That’s just not how it was. Yes, I occasionally pissed Maddie off because I didn’t follow protocols but I wasn’t crazy, and Blue never said anything about my mental health.’
Matt shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s nobody to corroborate your story. All we know is this,’ he said, holding an aerial image of the burned-out station close to the webcam so Luke could see it. ‘Not much left, huh?’ Matt said bitterly, as if it were all Luke’s fault.
Luke checked the date and time at the bottom of the satellite image. ‘This was taken yesterday afternoon,’ he said. ‘Surely you must have known something was wrong before then? Wasn’t the complete communications blackout a big giveaway that we were in trouble?’
Matt leaned back, as if to distance himself from the big man glaring at him, even though Luke was almost six thousand kilometres away. ‘None of the emergency systems were activated. Mac called in, on schedule, saying everything was A-OK. We only grew suspicious when family members told us they hadn’t had any contact, that planned calls had been missed, birthdays forgotten and so on. And by the way, it’s not easy to get the United States to move a surveillance satellite over Antarctica. We had to call in a big favour to get these images.’
Bloody red tape, Luke thought bitterly. Maddie might have been safely on board by now if AARO had asked for American assistance earlier. He was about to speak when Winchester entered the Tasmanian boardroom. He went straight to the phone on the sideboard and moved it to the table, then pressed the loudspeaker button.
Winchester addressed the person on the other end of the line. ‘Miss, you’re on loudspeaker.’
He then looked from Matt to Luke and Alrek. ‘This caller wishes to remain anonymous, but she may have useful information. Can you all please listen to what she has to say? Remember, our situation remains highly confidential.’ He was telling them not to reveal anything that she didn’t already know. ‘Miss, can we give you a made-up name? To make things easier. How about Julie?’
‘Fine,’ the woman said. ‘But I want to know who I’m talking to. Everyone listening. And no tracing this call. It’s a pay-as-you-go mobile.’ She had a strong Aussie twang.
Luke smiled despite the severity of the situation. Feisty. Reminded him of Maddie.
Winchester introduced everyone, then continued the discussion. ‘Julie, can you tell them what you just told me?’
‘I believe the Dragon Resources Corporation is drilling for oil in Antarctica, and they’re doing it – or they’re about to do it – right near your Hope Station.’
Winchester and Lovedale barely raised an eyebrow. They were hard men to convince. But Luke blanched. So that’s what they were willing to kill for – oil! Was Dragon Resources a Chinese company?
Before he could speak, Winchester chipped in. ‘The Antarctic Treaty forbids —’
Julie cut across his words. ‘I know, I’ve done my research. But I’m telling you they are already there. Have you seen the market today? It’s gone ballistic because of rumours they’ve found massive oil reserves in an “undisclosed location”.’
‘But that could be anywhere—’
She cut in again. ‘I have the coordinates.’
‘Go ahead,’ Winchester said, and waited.
She was silent. Luke sensed that she was afraid to give them, despite her bravado. Luke alone appreciated that she might be putting her life in danger.
‘Julie? Are you there?’ Winchester prodded.
Luke stepped in. ‘Julie, this is Luke Searle here. Please tell me the coordinates. Someone very dear to me is in danger, and your information could save her life.’
‘Luke!’ Winchester chastised.
‘Seventy-four degrees and fifty-two minutes south, one hundred degrees and thirty minutes west.’
Luke gasped. He pulled a large map towards him and pointed. ‘That’s on the very edge of the Hudson Mountains, barely half a kilometre from the Fitzgerald Fissure.’
‘That’s the seaward end of the Hudsons, isn’t it?’ asked Lovedale.
‘Yes,’ Luke said. ‘If this is correct, their camp is on the other side of the glacier from our station. Jesus, to think they were so near us and we never knew.’
Winchester cleared his throat loudly and frowned at Luke. Julie hadn’t known that Luke was from Hope. He wanted her knowledge of the situation kept to a minimum.
Luke ran his hand over his unshaven chin. ‘Julie, where is Dragon Resources’ headquarters?’
‘China. The head office is in Shanghai, but it’s majority-owned by a private-equity firm in Hong Kong called the Hood Group.’
‘Matt here. China has a station in the area. Perhaps you are mistaken and your data refers to activity at Li Bai Station,’ he said, to test her conviction.
‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ Julie snapped. ‘No, those are not the coordinates for Li bloody Bai.’ With her voice ripe with sarcasm, she continued. ‘Why don’t you contact your station and ask them to take a look? They could walk on over and introduce themselves.’
If only they could, Luke thought.
T MINUS 1 DAY, 11 HOURS, 49 MINUTES
9 March, 12:11 am (UTC-07)
Vast distances separated the woman they had named Julie from Luke and AARO’s headquarters, but she sensed she had hit a raw nerve. ‘Guys, are you still there?’
‘We’re here,’ Winchester replied.
‘Sorry I yelled, but I’m taking a big risk talking to you. I’m a little tense.’
‘Let’s move on, shall we?’ Winchester suggested.
‘Okay,’ said Luke. ‘Everything you’ve said makes perfect sense, but one thing worries me. Those coordinates are on the edge of one of the world’s largest and most unstable glaciers. It wouldn’t be possible to drill for oil through a moving ice sheet. The drill would snap, for a start. Why do you believe it’s oil? Could it be something else?’
‘Well, the news on the market is oil. And have you seen where WTI is trading nowadays? But yeah, it’s possible the journos have it wrong. Dragon also mines coal, uranium, natural gas, iron ore …’
‘What’s WTI?’ asked Lovedale.
‘West Texas Intermediate,’ Julie said. ‘It’s an oil price.’
Alrek spoke up. ‘What about in the Hudson Mountains themselves? The mountains don’t shift like the glacier does.’
Winchester tugged at the yellowing ends of his white moustache. ‘If we assume that this Dragon Resources is in Antarctica, we have to ask, what would China risk war over? For what would they risk worldwide condemnation? Because if this is true and they’ve murdered our people to get at a resource, then it has to be something very valuable indeed.’
It dawned on Luke that Winchester, Lovedale and Tangen now seemed to believe in the possibility that a hostile group was on the Pine Island Glacier. He felt his energy returning, as if his batteries had recharged.
‘Coal?’ suggested Alrek.
‘Not rare enough,’ said Lovedale.
‘Water?’ Luke proposed.
Alrek snorted with derision.
Luke ignored him. ‘Okay, it sounds crazy. But China’s rivers are polluted and dying. The Yangtze supplies something like one hundred and eighty cities, and it’s so dirty that it’s known as the cancerous river. And their farmland is drying up.’
&
nbsp; The woman agreed. ‘Yeah, food security is a big deal when you’ve got over a billion people. And without water you can’t grow crops.’
‘I know China’s spending billions on energy intensive desalination plants and their cloud seeding has never really got anywhere,’ Luke said. ‘They’re running out of options.’
‘Come off it,’ Alrek said. ‘Convert a glacier into water? And how do you transport it halfway around the world?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Luke, warming to the theory, ‘but the tip of the Pine Island Glacier is perfect for harvesting because it’s already floating on the sea.’
‘But how do they get it back to China?’ Alrek laughed. ‘Tow it? Ridiculous!’
‘Not as ridiculous as you think,’ Luke replied seriously. ‘Iceberg towing has been tried before, as far back as the seventies. I remember reading an article in 2006 about England’s Thames Water considering towing Arctic bergs, and at least one Middle Eastern country was looking into the logistics of it.’
‘That’s true,’ said Matt, whose engineering background was firing his enthusiasm for the idea. ‘Oil companies have been towing bergs away from their rigs for years. But you wouldn’t necessarily need to tow. If you found a way to crunch a berg into smaller pieces, you could do it piecemeal, carry it in one of those supertankers we found lying low inside Whalers Island.’
‘Whalers?’
Matt nodded. ‘The satellite images revealed two supertankers inside Whalers Island. The sulphurous mist cleared just enough for us to make them out.’
‘It would cost a fortune,’ Alrek protested.
‘Cost is all relative,’ Luke answered. ‘Water is now traded on the stock exchange. If someone had enough money to invest in ice-harvesting, they could make a fortune. And given how desperate the Chinese are for water, they might just be crazy enough to try something like this.’
‘I agree,’ said Julie. ‘I read a piece the other day that said the barrel price for water is over two hundred and fifty US dollars. That’s more than the price of oil. You know, if that’s what Dragon Resources is doing, they’d be creating a whole new industry: ice-harvesting. That’s actually pretty clever.’