‘You must be ready to leave tonight,’ Dedov said, pointing a finger at Luca. ‘There is a weather front coming, but you have not enough time to wait for it to pass. The first darkness will be here soon and you must act.’
‘I’d like to see the weather for myself. You got the latest satellite imagery?’ he asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ Dedov replied impatiently. He then uttered a quick sentence in Russian and, without appearing even to have heard what was said, one of the younger men jumped up from the table and scurried out of the room.
‘Sergei get you latest picture,’ Dedov continued, leaning closer to Luca. ‘Reach the site and get the samples. That is the number one priority. Science must come first. If you see anything else, you file a report to your government. Understood?’
‘Else? What else could there be out there?’
‘I said, you must file a report,’ Dedov spat back, as if the remark were entirely self-explanatory. ‘There is paperwork and there are rules. You cannot act like cowboy in these mountains. You have to work step by step.’
Shifting his weight round, he draped one bear-like arm across Luca’s back.
‘But first we toast success of mission,’ he said, and, grabbing the vodka bottle, added a tiny dribble to Luca’s already brimming shot glass. Luca stared at it, not wanting to do anything that would compromise his judgment out in the field, but at the same time knowing that to refuse would be tantamount to insulting Dedov. He had drunk with Russians in the past and knew that an event of any significance had to be sealed with a drink. The best defence was to show willing in the beginning, with the hope of an early exit once everyone else got stuck in.
‘Your health,’ Luca said, raising the glass. A wistful smile appeared at the corners of Dedov’s mouth before he slugged back his vodka at a single gulp.
‘And to your successful mission,’ he countered, already re-filling the glasses. Luca hammered back the second shot with alacrity, trying not to wince as the liquid clawed its way down his throat. Beside him, Dedov watched closely. For the briefest of moments, the bonhomie drained from his face. Behind the hanging smoke, his eyes hardened with unreadable intent. The look only lasted a moment before he seemed to check himself and fished a gherkin from one of the Tupperware boxes on the table. He bit down on the anaemic-looking specimen, before offering the rest to Luca. The Englishman shook his head, feeling secure enough to refuse this part of the Russian’s hospitality.
‘You must eat otherwise you get drunk,’ Dedov explained, swallowing the rest of the gherkin in a single mouthful. ‘And here, we do not like drunks.’
There was a murmur of agreement from the nearest of his underlings as the remnants of the vodka bottle were metred out into the now-empty glasses. Another bottle miraculously appeared and the seal was broken before it had even reached the table. Tilting his head back, Dedov lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke upwards into the drifting haze above the table.
‘You are climbing man,’ he said. ‘You understand mountains and nature. Already you have better understanding of Antarctica than this kind of scientist.’ Dedov nodded to where Joel was seated at the opposite side of the table, still trying to follow the conversation out of some misplaced sense of civility. ‘He is scientist, yes, but he does not
feel
Antarctica. He only look at this continent through thick glasses and the screen of his computer.’ Dedov burped, banging the top of his chest to expel the last of the trapped air. ‘But this is a place that you must fall in love with. It is like a mistress that is beautiful, even cruel. But most of all, she is fragile.’
He smiled indulgently. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, ‘she is fragile.’
Taking another shot, he turned to Luca. Smoke had already tinged his eyes red and his pupils looked watery. The mask of bonhomie was gone.
‘Antarctica must be protected, and we must do it together, like brothers-in-arms.’
Luca stared at him, almost unable to believe how swiftly a Russian’s sensibilities could change. After only a few shots of vodka, Dedov was already speaking as if they were about to embark on a lifelong crusade together.
‘Protect her from what exactly?’ Luca asked.
‘From us. From man – we protect Antarctica with our left hand, while trying to destroy it with our right.’ Dedov held up his hands, idly inspecting his palms. ‘But perhaps here the left has a chance to succeed. Perhaps
here
we tell different story.’ With an air of finality, he squeezed his fingers closed. ‘But one thing I do know for sure. Out here you have the chance to make your own destiny. Out here, you get to choose.’
He banged the tabletop, immediately killing the conversation.
‘To the drilling expedition!’ he shouted, raising his glass in a toast. To a man, the table got to their feet and held their glasses aloft. ‘Now our British brothers will complete the work we have begun!’
There was a general nodding of heads, with even an encouraging glance offered towards Joel, before the shot glasses were drained. Through the smoke Luca could make out Joel’s face, flushed from vodka and beaming with gratitude at this sudden, unexplained acceptance by their Russian hosts.
As they sat back down Luca slowly scanned one face then the next around the table, finally reaching Dedov’s. Russians followed their leader. It was a singular truth that he had learnt from a two-month rigging job in the Caspian Sea. So why had Luca’s arrival suddenly altered Dedov’s attitude towards the British? Why should
he
make all the difference?
As their eyes met, Dedov smiled. There was something paternal about that smile, something ingratiating and easy. It was unlike any of the tight-lipped imitations Luca had encountered so frequently back home. Maybe it was because Dedov had spent so many years in the science bases of Antarctica, isolated from the real world, that he could behave with such openness
It was strange, nevertheless. If Luca had considered Dedov in his component parts, he would have said that the Russian was ugly and bloated, with a massive bushy beard that ran down into the hair poking out at his neckline. All that was true, and yet the sum of his whole seemed to be so much more. Bates had been right: Dedov did have a peculiar charisma to him. It was something innate, almost subconscious, to which other people found themselves drawn. Watching him was almost mesmeric, as though Luca were staring into the embers of a campfire.
Pulling at the collar of his jacket, he felt the fug of sweat and alcohol close in around him. The vodka was making him feel heady and relaxed, as though nothing else existed beyond the walls of the base. He could so easily let the shot glasses be re-filled and re-filled, settle back into the glow of the afternoon and let the rest of the world go on without him. But as he reached towards his glass on the table, his wrist brushed against the edge of Bates’ memory stick sewn into the lining of his jacket.
Could Dedov really be the dangerous uranium smuggler Luca had been warned against? He seemed to be nothing more than a nostalgic old scientist in love with Antarctica. Even if he were making lots of money from this secret enterprise, Luca could barely imagine what Dedov would choose to spend it on. He gave the distinct impression that everything he needed in life was right in front of him.
The real enigma here was Bates. Now that he thought back to their first conversation, Luca felt sure that it wasn’t so much concern that Bates had been hiding in his eyes as fear. He had been genuinely scared of something.
‘Poet, I have latest weather report.’
They turned to see Sergei clutching a computer printout. As he handed it across to Luca, he shook his head.
‘Same big system off coast,’ Sergei added. ‘I think it come here day after tomorrow.’
‘Day after tomorrow?’ Luca asked. ‘I’ve done some calculations and it’s a minimum of twenty hours’ travel each way. And that’s
if
we find an easy route across the mountains. Plus these guys aren’t mountaineers. They’ll need time to rest in between.’
He stared at Dedov, blinking several times as he tried to throw off the alcohol-induced apathy.
‘I have seen such storms many times,’ Dedov stated, his voice measured as if recounting empirical fact. ‘They build for many days off coast before coming inland.’
Luca raised an eyebrow as he took the satellite image from Sergei’s grasp. The entire mid-quadrant of the page was filled with a spiralling arm of cloud, with the isobars knotting together as a low-pressure gradient plummeted towards the centre. It was a monstrous storm that had been hovering off the coast for the last twenty-four hours, building in intensity and size. If they weren’t back at GARI by the time it hit, they wouldn’t stand a chance out in the open.
Dedov leant closer, casting his eyes over the same image.
‘You must go now or there will be no time to make it back before the last flight.’
‘And if we get caught out there?’ Luca asked. ‘We’re not going to walk away from a storm like that.’
‘You must understand,’ Dedov countered, levelling a finger at Luca’s chest, ‘I would not send men into field if I thought danger too big. In my opinion, you have time if you go directly.’
‘What about at the drill site? Could we shelter there if it gets bad?’
‘Drill site only manned in summer months and so we took back living modules by tractor two weeks ago. There is only tower and technical piping equipment remaining.’
Dedov paused, casting his eyes down to the satellite image once more. He sucked in air between his teeth as his eyes followed every line and contour of the page. Eventually, he nodded to himself. His voice dropped to a whisper as he added, ‘If you are stuck in storm, there is abandoned Soviet base on east side of lake. It was only used in summer months, many years ago. But it is there.’
He signalled for Luca to pull out his map and, after a moment’s deliberation, zeroed in on the exact point, scrawling the GPS latitude and longitude from memory with a pen extracted from somewhere within his grubby overalls.
‘Don’t go to base unless you absolutely have to,’ he added. ‘Old construction and building not safe.’
‘Why didn’t you mention this place before?’ Luca asked.
‘I mention it now,’ Dedov replied flatly. ‘But base very unstable and dangerous. You must stay clear unless no other option.’
With that, he scraped back his chair and stood up. Silence descended on the room once again.
‘Our British brothers need us to drive tractors to mountain edge. We drop them there and return to base. Every man ready in fifteen minutes.’
There was a confused lull as the men around the table slowly took on board the fact that they were required actually to do something other than drink. Then, without a word of complaint, they staggered to their feet and started donning their outer clothing. The stocky Russian next to Joel repeatedly jabbed his gloves on to the wrong hands and, when Joel tried to correct him, swatted away any attempt at help, drunkenly protesting that they fitted better that way. One by one they filed out of the room and down towards the heavy machinery in the garage.
‘Sure your men are up to it?’ Luca asked as the last one stumbled over the metal doorplate.
‘They eat lots of gherkin,’ Dedov retorted, with no hint of irony. He then turned to Joel. ‘Go tell other Englishmen and get them on board the tractors. We leave in fifteen minutes.’
‘Can I at least meet them before we head off?’ Luca asked. ‘I’d like the chance to talk them through the expedition.’
Dedov swatted away the suggestion with a single wave of his hand.
‘Talk! Talk! You have all time in the world to talk on mountain. We leave now.’
Luca inhaled deeply, knowing that there was little point in arguing. As Joel got himself together and left the module, Luca turned towards Sergei.
‘I want to check one more thing on the weather,’ he said. ‘Where did the sat image come from?’
‘We download satellite image in main communication room.’
‘Good,’ he said, reaching for the memory stick in his jacket. ‘Take me there.’
BEAR MAKURU CLOSED
the sliding door of the toilet and stalked into the small kitchenette set into the sidewall of her office. She pressed the button on the espresso machine while surreptitiously sliding a used pregnancy test wrapped in toilet paper into the pedal bin. Two lines. Two bloody lines! Edith had been right.
‘Beatrice. A word, please.’
Turning at the sound of her manager’s voice, Bear watched as Etienne du Val glided into the room. He was a trim man in his late-forties, who prided himself on always being immaculately dressed even outside the office. His eyes were the same colour as his jet black hair and, when he spoke, he did so through tight lips, enunciating each word with an affected sense of calm. But the calm was only skin-deep. On at least three occasions in the past, Bear had seen him scream with uncontrollable rage at office juniors over the most trivial of mistakes.
As he approached the far side of her desk, Bear could smell the fresh wash of his aftershave. It was a smell she had grown to despise over the years.
‘I didn’t say anything in the meeting room,’ du Val began, ‘but we both know that you should already be on assignment. So, would you like to tell me what’s going on?’
Bear raised herself to her full height. Even wearing flats, she was nearly an inch taller than her boss. Placing her hands on her hips, she let the full wattage of her gaze rest on him.
‘Look, Etienne, I don’t have time for this. I have a meeting starting in a couple of minutes.’
‘It’s been three weeks,’ du Val interjected. ‘Three weeks and I still have nothing to report to our friends upstairs.’
‘You’ll get . . .’ Bear began, but du Val cut her off.
‘You earn a good salary, Beatrice. In fact it’s excellent, and that’s because you get the job done. You jump in with both feet – always have.’ He paused, breathing in deeply as if to sample the smell of coffee in the air. ‘And yet here we are, still with no report.’
Du Val paused again, but this time in hesitation. He wondered if he should voice his next sentence. Normally he would never have challenged Bear so openly, but over the last few weeks he had noticed a change in her that emboldened him. She had been looking tired of late, unsure of herself even. Moving around the edge of the desk, he stepped a little closer. ‘What happened to the woman we hired in Chile?’