Zodiac Station (29 page)

‘Patch them through.’

A click, and the sound changed. Static, throbbing rotors, and the pilot’s voice coming through the cold air.

‘No sign of Anderson, but we got that radio beacon. Fifteen miles north of your position.’

‘Is the ice stable? Are you able to land?’

‘Yes, sir. We set down and had a look. Signal’s coming from inside of a tent.’

‘Anderson?’ The minute he said it, he knew that couldn’t be right. No way could he have gone that far across the ice so fast.

‘I …’ A flare of static. ‘… ought to come … see for yourself, Captain. And bring the Doc.’

USCGC
Terra Nova

The ice fled away below the helicopter – and however much they covered, there was always more. Hard to believe in global warming when you saw a sight like that, though Franklin had served on enough Arctic deployments that he wasn’t fooled. Every year, a little less ice. A lot less, some years. If it kept up, the
Terra Nova
would be the last Coast Guard ship of her kind.

Out the window, a speck of colour broke the infinite whiteness. A drop in the ocean – but his eye picked it out. As the helicopter flew nearer, it separated in two, like an amoeba. A bright red Scott tent, pitched in the shadow of a huge ice ridge, and in front of it a black snowmobile.

‘Hell of a place to go camping,’ said Santiago.

The ice hardly stirred as the helicopter touched down. Concrete solid. Franklin remembered a class at the academy, some guy in World War Two who’d calculated how thick ice needed to be to hold a given weight. At two inches, it would hold a man; ten inches, a truck. What he was standing on now was probably a good couple of feet. Still.

The tent door opened and an ensign came out, waddling over the ice in his bulky mustang suit. They must all look like a group of old-school comic-book astronauts, Franklin thought. All they needed were the fishbowl helmets.

‘Nothing’s changed, sir.’

As they passed the snowmobiles, Franklin noticed someone had rubbed a hole in the frost that covered the gauges.

‘Out of gas,’ the ensign explained.

‘Of all the luck,’ said Santiago. ‘There’s a Mobil two miles up the road.’

They reached the tent and hesitated, unsure who should go first.

‘Take a look,’ the ensign said.

The first thing that hit Franklin when he crawled in was the colour. Soft, opium red after the whiteness outside. A survival bag lay on a mat on the floor, surrounded by candy-bar wrappers. Two heads stuck out, a man and a woman spooning side by side fully clothed, straining the close-fitting bag almost to breaking. A strand of blonde hair escaped from under the woman’s hat; the man wore a beard that couldn’t be much more than a week old.

‘Are they …?’

The ensign had stuck his head through the door behind him. ‘Hanging in there. Passed out. I thought it was better to let them rest.’ A sheepish look. ‘In case, you know, they weren’t happy to see us.’

Franklin fished out the battered sheet of paper and studied it. The photographs had never been great. Now, emailed, printed, handled and frozen, they looked more like masterpieces of impressionism. Even so.

‘That’s got to be Greta Nystrom.’

He looked at the man next to her. ‘But there’s no way that’s Fridtjof Torell.’

He unzipped the sleeping bag. The man still wore his coat underneath, the white Zodiac Station insignia half covered by his arm. Above it, a name stitched into the Gore-Tex, dim in the tent’s red gloom.
Anderson
.

A little dizzy, Franklin pulled apart the Velcro fastenings that held the coat together. No zip – it had broken. He opened the coat and reached inside to feel a pulse. Weak, but not gone yet.

As he pulled out his arm, he felt something hard on the inside of the coat. A notebook bulging out of the inside pocket. Two notebooks, in fact, a green one and a brown one, and an envelope sandwiched between them that dropped on to the tent floor when he pulled them out. Still sealed, addressed in the loopy writing kids use when they’re trying hard.

He ducked out of the tent and showed it to Santiago. ‘You believe this?’

Santiago read the address. ‘Is that what this is about? Santa Claus?’

Franklin ripped a hole in the envelope, then paused, embarrassed. Santiago smirked at him.

‘Worried the real Santa’s gonna know you did a bad thing?’

Franklin slit it open with his finger and unfolded the letter inside. He read it quickly.

‘Kid wants an Xbox game and a new bike. Must be British – he says “thank you” at the end.’

‘Show it to Eastman?’ Santiago suggested. ‘Could be a Russian code.’

‘You’re a cynical bastard, Ops. No presents for you.’

‘So my mom always told me.’

Putting the letter aside, Franklin gave Santiago the green notebook and took the brown one for himself. They flicked through.

‘Get anything, Ops?’

‘If I remember the eighth grade right, sir, I’d say this looks like science. Maybe we can have the geeks check that out.’ Santiago looked at his captain. ‘You OK, boss?’

Franklin was staring at the brown notebook as if he’d been hit with a two-by-four.

‘A ham sandwich,’ he murmured to himself.

‘Come again, sir?’

He pulled his hood back, as if he needed more space around him. ‘This one’s some kind of journal.’

Phrases swam off the page.

Laid over in Tromsø – had a ham sandwich at the airport.

Quam calls me ‘the new intruder’.

Why did Hagger bring me here?

If he reads this, he’ll kill me.

‘Did he write his name and phone number in the front?’

Franklin went back to the very beginning and read the first line.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of the north.

Anderson’s Journal – Wednesday

It’s not often you wake up to find you’ve been unconscious for two days. And survived a plane crash. And that someone wants to kill you.

I lay on the bed, staring at the grey ceiling, as pieces of memory fell into place. Each one was a minor revelation. I had no framework, no preconceptions at all. Just curiosity, like a tourist flipping through the guidebook of an unfamiliar city.

Heathrow Airport.

Zodiac Station.

Martin Hagger.

A crevasse.

The last piece I remembered was myself. Like looking up from the guidebook and finding the city all around you: suddenly, abstract facts meant something. I shuddered; I think I must have cried out loud in terror. It’s a frightening thing, remembering who you are.

I touched my neck and felt hair, stubble grown just long enough to lose its abrasive edge. I touched my head and felt a bandage.

I heard a door click open, and twisted my head round to see. Which was a mistake: someone had left a red-hot coal in my skull that rocked around when I moved.

Through the tears, I saw a man walk in, wearing a grey polo neck and corduroy trousers.

Dr Kennedy
, my mental guidebook informed me.

‘How are we this morning?’ He certainly talked like a doctor.

‘Where am I?’

‘Wednesday morning. And still at Zodiac.’

Zodiac. Lying on the ground, ice crystals cold against the back of my neck. Awash with pain. A figure standing over me. A rock raised to strike.

I rubbed the back of my head. Gingerly. ‘I don’t know …’

‘Some short-term memory loss is quite normal,’ he said. As if that was reassuring. ‘It’ll come back in time.’

Another piece of the jigsaw dropped into place – and another surge of panic. How could I have forgotten—

‘I need to talk to Luke.’ I struggled up, fighting the pain in my head. The clock on the wall said ten past ten. ‘He’ll be at school.’

‘Greta’s spoken to him,’ Kennedy said. ‘He knows you’re OK.’

Greta.
Another piece, though I couldn’t fit it into the main picture straight away. I lay back while he fiddled around putting some pills in a cup. I took them gratefully with a glass of water. I hadn’t realised how thirsty I was.

I caught him watching me. The panic tightened my chest. In that situation, you’re so vulnerable: anyone could tell you anything.

‘Do you remember the fall?’ he asked.

All my memories felt fake, like slide pictures in one of those old plastic View-Master things, clicking round as you squeeze the button.
Click.
Standing on the ice, reading a notebook.
Click
. An explosion in my skull; sinking to my knees.
Click
. A man standing over me, so big he blotted out the sun.
Arm raised.
Click.
Leaning forward, face buried in his hood, watching me. A start as if he recognised me.

Click
. White light.

‘I didn’t fall,’ I said. Experimentally, testing a hypothesis, but saying the words felt right. ‘Someone came at me.’

He tried to tell me there hadn’t been anyone else there except Annabel.

‘She’d gone behind the rocks.’
I need a wee.
‘Someone hit me from behind.’

‘You fell in a moulin,’ he told me. But there was a long pause before he said it. He didn’t look well. His face was grey; his hands were twitching.

‘Someone hit me,’ I repeated. Saying it again to affirm the memory. The View-Master slides had upgraded to video, strictly VHS, like the old tapes you find at the back of a cupboard. Skipping and jerking; bars of static raining down the screen.

Kennedy checked my pupils and tried to tell me it was all a dream. His face came so close, his beard rubbed my cheek as he peered into my eye. Shining the light through me, as if I was the View-Master and he could see the pictures inside. I could smell mouthwash on his breath.

‘I found a notebook,’ I remembered.

An unhappy look crossed Kennedy’s face. As if there were things he didn’t want me to remember. The panic inside me went up a notch. I wished I hadn’t swallowed those pills quite so readily.

He went over to the side and opened a cabinet. I couldn’t see him much – I didn’t want to move my head again – but I had the sense he’d deliberately turned his back on me. There seemed to be a lot of fumbling going on inside the cabinet.

I heard it snap shut. Kennedy reappeared and handed me a green notebook. The moment I touched it, I remembered a bright cave, light so blue I wanted to drink it. A backpack inside.

On the inside cover, I read a handwritten sentence, all capitalised.
SOME SAY THE WORLD WILL BEGIN IN FIRE, SOME SAY IN ICE.

Robert Frost
, my guidebook said. Strange, the things you remember.

I flipped through slowly. Pulling each page into focus hurt my head; trying to understand it was worse. As much as I knew anything for sure, it looked like a standard lab notebook. Lists of samples with places and dates, hand-drawn graphs and equations. And, not far in, a line that almost made me fall off the bed.

‘“Fridge wants to kill me,”’ I read aloud.

‘A figure of speech.’ Kennedy smacked his hand to his mouth and swallowed something. ‘Martin did some work for DAR-X. Fridge thought that was sleeping with the enemy. Fridge is a bit of an eco-warrior,’ he explained, in case I’d forgotten. Which I had.

‘And what’s “X”?’ I asked. I saw it on every page:
Concentration of X
,
dispersal of X
,
flow of X
. The punctuation – sharp exclamation points, heavy question marks – emphasised his frustration.

‘I was hoping you could tell me.’ Kennedy glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘If you’re feeling up to it, see if you can make anything of the notebook while I have a look at Trond. Good to give your brain something to work on,’ he added as he went out.

‘Who’s Trond?’ I asked. But he’d already gone.

Greta came in. A second later, I realised I’d known her name without thinking about it. That felt like progress.

‘You woke up.’

‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t.’

‘What do you remember?’

‘I don’t know how much there is to forget.’

‘Do you remember the plane crash?’

‘Very funny.’

‘It’s not a joke.’ Briefly – she doesn’t have any other way of talking – she told me how they’d loaded me on to the Twin Otter to fly me home, how it had turned around with mechanical problems, and how it had crash-landed. ‘You were lucky you survived.’

‘Jesus.’ I lay down on the bed. Sweat soaked my cheeks.

‘Kennedy said you spoke to Luke. To tell him what happened.’

‘Somebody had to.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘He said he was staying with his aunt.’

She said it the way she said everything: every word a nail to be hammered in straight. But I heard the question. Or maybe I imagined it, from hearing it so often before.

‘His mother’s dead. In a plane crash, not long after he was born. That’s why, when you told me about the plane …’ I pulled up the sheet and wiped sweat off my face. ‘Both parents – what kind of desperate coincidence would that be?’ I forced myself to calm down. ‘Anyway, I’m alive.’

‘It sucks about your wife.’

Interesting reaction. ‘Most people say they’re sorry.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She was teasing me, I think, but not unkindly.

‘We’d already split up.’ Three years from falling in love to divorce, via marriage, a baby, an affair and a scandal. And her PhD. We packed a lot in, in those days. We were young.

I looked at Greta for some sort of signal to go on. She was staring into space, face fixed in an expression of furious concentration.

With a shock, I remembered another piece of the puzzle. Her and Hagger. There was I, wallowing in pity for something that had happened seven years ago; her wounds were still wide open. She didn’t want to hear about me.

Greta and Hagger. An image flashed through my mind: glass snapping, blood on my fingers. Greta had been there, I knew now. She’d said—

‘Hagger’s death wasn’t an accident.’

She gave me a cool once-over. ‘What do you think?’

‘How about the plane crash?’

‘They said it was the fuel tank.’

‘And?’