In The Wreckage: A Tale of Two Brothers (29 page)

Conall made for the room where he had spoken to Faro, weeks before when he was first captured. He opened the door, wincing as the hinges creaked and squealed. The green blaze of the aurora through the windows gave just enough light that he could make out the table in the middle of the room. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Faro?”
 

There was no answer. He ran his hands over a desk against one wall, searching by touch alone until he felt cold, smooth steel and the familiar shape of his binoculars. He grasped them like a long lost friend, his only thing of value in all those years on Shetland. That, and his brother’s friendship.
 

He crossed to the window and put the lenses to his eyes, contemplating the dance of light across the northern skies. Behind him the door opened. Conall stood motionless, not making a sound. He sensed someone standing, watching him, felt eyes on the back of his head. He made an easy target, silhouetted against the glow of the aurora.
 

“A thief in the night,” Faro said. He stepped into the room and the door clicked shut behind him. “Risking your life, just to steal back your stupid binoculars. They never did you any good. All those years thinking Mum and Dad would come looking for you. Forget that. Grow up.”
 

Conall turned to face his brother. “I’m not here for the glasses. I’m here for you. You’re in danger.”
 

“That’s good of you.” Faro’s voice was thick with sarcasm. “I think I can manage, don’t need to be saved by my little brother.”
 

 
“The wildmen are coming. I can hide you, get you out of here.” He paused. “Dad’s here, he’s one of the slaves. The old-timer, they call him.”
 

“Yeah, I know.”
 

So his father had been right about Faro, all along. He’d known but done nothing and didn’t care. “Mum’s alive too, she’s with the wildmen.”
 

“What a pair.”
 

Conall’s hand went to his belt. No knife. In the middle of a battle, he still had no weapon.“We can get out, the four of us, be together.”
 

He waited for Faro. A moment of silence. Somewhere in the room a clock ticked. One second, two. The battle had gone quiet. Ten seconds ticked away, then a gunshot from outside, the screech of a man in agony.
 

“It’s a bit late to play the happy family.” Faro turned on a torch and fumbled for something on his desk. He pulled open a drawer and took out paperwork, stuffing it into a bag that hung from his shoulder. “I’m not a child anymore. I don’t need a mom and dad. Go run to them if you want.”
 

“The Oduma will kill you for what you did today. And Jonah, he’ll do it as thanks for the torture. The slaves will lynch you. They all want you dead. I’m your only chance.”

“Things aren’t that desperate.” Faro shone the torch into Conall’s eyes. “The company will look after me. Better than my parents ever did.”
 

Conall held up a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the torch. “It’s over. The wildmen are taking Svalbard back.”
 

“They can keep it,” Faro said. “I can’t wait to get out. The company’s everywhere, that’s what you don’t understand. I can go to Greenland, we’re building cities there. Alaska, Siberia. We’re rebuilding the old world. I’m part of that. What are you doing? Running around with a bunch of savages, clinging to your mother’s coat-tails.”
 

Conall took a step across the room, paused, then another. Faro swivelled, moved back to the door. “I’ve got a gun,” Faro said. “Stay back.”
 

“You’d use it too.”
 

“If you get in my way.” Faro opened the door. He paused.
 

“Where will you go? You can’t get out. Come and see Dad, speak to him. Make things right. We can get you out alive, I promise.”

“Sorry,” Faro said, “company business to deal with.”
 

“Forget the damned company.”
 

“Stay here or the guards will shoot you. I’ll shoot you, if you get in the way.” Faro clicked the door shut as he left, with not a word of goodbye.
 

Conall crossed the room, opened the door and blundered through the darkness calling to his brother. Faro’s voice drifted up the stairs, yelling orders to the guards, telling them to follow him. Three shots were followed by more shouting, and Conall heard Jonah bellowing, angry and defiant. Conall stumbled down the stairs, clinging to the rail and feeling for the steps with his feet.
 

He was near the bottom when he sensed a figure ahead of him in the darkness.
 

“Hold it,” Jonah said. “Or I’ll shoot.”
 

“It’s me.”
 

“Mr Hawkins, you’ll get yourself killed, sneaking around in the dark. I thought you were lying about taking Miss Hudson to safety. Left her alone, I guess, not the night for it. Looking for your brother? You won’t save him, not like this.”
 

“He wasn’t here.”
 

“Don’t lie to me boy.” Jonah’s voice rattled with anger. “I know he was here, heard him plain as day and he told his men to shoot us, so I reckon we’ll return the favour.”
 

The breeze of the night air drifted along the hallway. The main door was open. Faro must have fled but the wildmen would surely catch him.
 

“You know where they were going? Tell us straight,” Jonah said.
 

He had to lie. “I don’t know, towards the main gate, I think.” It wasn’t a good lie, but the best he could manage. But he knew which way Faro must have gone. To the quayside. He’d get out by boat. There was no other way. “I need to find my father.” He slipped past Jonah.
 

“Don’t believe you for a minute,” Jonah said. He called for Bagatt and Proctor. Their replies drifted up the steps to the basement. Conall glided through the main doors. The first glimpse of dawn had appeared to the east. He ran to the quayside, ignoring the shouts of slavers and wildmen. The battle must be nearly done. The guards had fled or died.
 

When he reached the quayside the patrol boat had already sailed. The shape of it was still visible, heading across the dark waters of the bay, the chug of its diesel engine receding as it made for the open water of the fjord.
 

Conall stalked the quayside peering at the boats in the dawn light. He could take one, try to follow, but he didn’t have the seamanship. And Faro wouldn’t listen. If he hadn’t listened back there, he wouldn’t now, once he’d made his escape. Let him go. At least he’d be alive. He’d surely flee Spitsbergen and never return.
 

Conall turned to walk along the dock. Jonah, Bagatt and the engineer prowled the harbour. They were looking for a boat. Did they mean to follow Faro? Did revenge mean so much to them?
 

As he strode towards them Jonah turned suddenly, his sword raised. “Still sneaking around Mr Hawkins. I swear you’ll get yourself skewered or shot before the night is done. Be a shame to be killed by your friends, after all you’ve been through.”
 

“You’ll never catch them, they’ve got an engine, and a boat big enough for the open sea. They’ll be half way to Greenland.”
 

“Good luck to ‘em and good riddance,” Jonah said. “You coming, young Hawkins? Want your share?”
 

“You’re going after the treasure? After a night like this?”
 

“No better time, what with all the confusion,” Jonah said.
 

Bagatt and the engineer were in a sailboat, getting her oars ready to pull away from shore. Jonah clambered in. “What’s it to be?”
 

Conall paused for a moment. Would Faro go to the treasure? No, he’d never be that stupid. “I have to find my dad, and Heather, Rufus.”
 

“Aye well, take care lad. But there’s no share, except for those that find it.”
 

The boat pulled away from shore. Conall watched them go as the light grew in the east, a clear day dawning. The first day in months that he hadn’t been a slave.
 

He walked along the quayside to a stone tower, fifty feet high. It served as a storehouse and a lookout and a lighthouse to guide ships towards the harbour. Steep steps circled the outside of the building, taking him to the vantage point with a clear view of the fjord in the early dawn light. He put the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the ocean, hoping for one last glimpse of Faro’s boat before it disappeared. There was no sign of it, and he guessed it must be hugging the southern shore, out of sight around a spit of land. But there, in the distance, beyond the headland on the northern shore, the faintest gleam of white. He focused the binoculars, watched, waited. There is was again. A mast. Three masts. White sails.
The Arkady
had come to take them home.
 

By the time
The Arkady
sailed into the harbour, the battle was over and the compound secured. The remaining slavers, those that hadn’t fled with Faro, were either dead or in chains.
 

“She’s a beautiful sight to be sure,” Adam Hawkins said as the ship slipped towards the quayside. “You were crew on her? A good choice, son.”
 

“Faro’s idea.” Conall scanned the faces that lined the deck. The captain and his wife stood on the railings, their eyes devouring the crowd on the quayside, searching for their daughter. The makeshift crew looked like a mix of settlers and Oduma tribesmen. Conall had only a few weeks of sailing time, but he could tell they were green and untrained. “He’s a good captain, bringing her all this way, with a raw crew.”
 

“He’ll be glad to get his own men back, then,” Adam said.
 

The crewmen of
The Arkady
grabbed the ropes as they were thrown to shore. They secured the ship then leapt the railings to board her even before the gangplank had been pushed across.
 

Conall ruffled Rufus’s ears. “I’d best go tell the captain where Jonah and Bagatt have got to, with his engineer. He’ll be anxious to see them most of all.”
 

“Maybe not,” Adam said, as Heather shoved her way through the crowd towards her parents. “It’s their child they’ll be thinking about the most. Take that from me.”
 

Conall followed Heather across the gangplank onto the deck of
The Arkady
, signalling for his father to join him. On the main deck Captain Hudson and his wife hugged their daughter, as if reluctant to ever let go of her again.
 

The captain held out a hand to Conall. “I hear I’ve you to thank, for looking after her. Felt bad about you being captured, after all you did to rescue us.”
 

Conall shook the captain’s hand. “How did you fix the ship? How did you find her?”
 

“Tugon,” Hudson said. “And we got help from the settlers, once we won their trust. Things will be different here, with the wildmen and the settlers talking to each other at last. Good to see the men are all right, but where’s Mr Bagatt? And my engineer? Rawlings said they were with you, last he saw.”
 

“Gone with Jonah.”
 

“He’s here? I heard he’d disappeared, gone off on his own. Got himself captured, did he? Where’s he taken them?”

Conall lowered his voice, not wanting to be overheard by the Oduma who thronged around them. “He was captured by slavers, while looking for the treasure. And that’s where they’ve gone now. Don’t say anything. The wildmen will kill anyone who goes near it.”
 

The captain glanced at his wife. They smiled at each other as if sharing a joke, but the captain’s face soon changed to a deep frown. “How long have they been gone?”
 

“An hour or more.”
 

Erica put a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, they won’t find it.”

She sounded sure, but Conall knew better. “Jonah’s seen your maps, took them from
The Arkady
when we beached her.”
 

The captain rubbed his beard with his right hand. “That won’t help him much. The maps are out of date. And we heard about the slavers, pulling down the stone circle. Sacrilege it might be, but it won’t lead ‘em to any treasure. They’ve got it wrong.”
 

“Jonah knows it, he’s worked it out, where the treasure’s buried. Under the rubble.”
 

“Ahhh,” the captain said, his face troubled. “Then we have a problem. He has to be stopped.”

“So the treasure exists?” asked Adam.
 

The gleam in his father’s eyes was familiar. Conall recognised that look from Faro’s face. And from Jonah’s and Bagatt’s. The dream of riches and easy money.
 

“No.” The captain shook his head sadly, as if contemplating the folly of the world. “There’s no treasure, not the kind Jonah’s looking for. Nor Faro either.”
 

“No gold?” Adam said. “No diamonds? How can you be sure?”
 

“Because I know what’s buried down there,” the captain said, “and it’s the reason we came to Spitsbergen. Something far more precious than gold. But I fear Jonah Argent is in for a sore disappointment.”
 

“But the damage he’ll do,” Erica said. “We have to stop him.”
 

“You’re talking in riddles,” Adam said. “What treasure? What damage?”
 

“Seeds,” Erica said.
 

Adam Hawkins craned his head forward towards her. “Seeds?” His voice incredulous, almost despairing. “Seeds?”
 

“Seeds,” the captain said. “The Svalbard Seed Bank, sealed and protected in air tight, temperature controlled rooms, well above sea levels. Put there by men of the old world, for safe keeping.”

“That’s it? Seeds?” Adam paced in a tight circle. “Feel a little foolish now. Ten years as a slave, since going after that treasure.”