Beneath the Ice (6 page)

Stang tilted the mirror lower. Despite the temperature in the room being a few degrees below zero, he was bare-chested. He ran the mirror slowly down the side of his torso. It was sheet-white from lack of sun, in direct contrast to his face, but Stang wasn’t interested in that. Instead, he stared at the line of abdominal muscles running down the sides of his body, before his eyes settled on the great slabs of his pectorals. They curved across his chest like the flanks of a mighty racehorse and, as they filled the mirror, Stang instinctively tensed each one.

He had always been naturally strong, just like his father, Fedor Stang, before him. In fact, the months he had spent in Antarctica had given him the chance to train obsessively and he was quite sure that he was now even bigger than his father had been. He spent three hours every day, conditioning his body with narcissistic fervour, until his neck bulged and his thermal tops stretched to bursting at the seams. Grunting with satisfaction, Stang went to put the mirror down when he caught sight of his own eyes in the glass. He stopped abruptly, blinking as he took in their grey, almost translucent, colour. The eyes seemed to lack any recognisable form, only the pupils distinguishable as a dull speck dead centre. He peered closer, desperately trying to remember what colour they had once been.

He thought back to those first few days in Antarctica. He had been so unprepared, so pathetic. Without sunglasses or goggles, the sun’s glare had been relentless, burning deep into his retina and causing him to go snow blind. For three whole days he had seen nothing but darkness then his eyes had become maddeningly itchy. On the second day, a viscous, pus-like fluid wept from their corners and he had thought he would never regain his sight.

Blind and alone in the middle of Antarctica – only then had he truly understood the meaning of fear.

He remembered the panic, the desperate sense of abandonment as he tried to search for the MSR stove through the tons of equipment he had brought with him. He needed it to melt the snow into drinking water, and with each hour that passed his thirst worsened. Eating fistfuls of snow only seemed to postpone the agony for a few minutes. Even before the numbness faded from his lips his thirst would return like some insatiable demon, causing his throat to swell up so badly that he could barely breathe.

Only on the third day did light begin to separate from darkness. Blurry patches came first, then solid shapes, and as each one grew more distinct, he redoubled his efforts to find the stove amongst the piles of unsorted supplies. But already he had become so weak. In only three days he had gone from being religiously fit and athletic, to a half-maddened wretch surviving on only a few sips of water.

Two things changed that day: Stang vowed never to be unprepared again and his eyes never recovered. Although his vision returned, his pupils were irreparably damaged, the colour permanently etched from them.

Stang lowered the aluminium panel and slowly tilted his head up towards the ceiling in thought. What colour had his eyes been? It was such a simple question. So obvious.

In a flurry of activity, he reached into the side pocket of his fleece trousers and pulled out a meticulously folded cellophane bag containing his Norwegian passport. Carefully holding it up to the light, he first read his own name printed neatly on the laminated page, then his date of birth. He scanned both slowly as if trying to commit the details to memory. Then he let his eyes turn to the image neatly stuck on the opposite side of the page.

There was a man in his late-thirties, with a rounded but strong face and cropped hair. The man looked determined and quietly resolved, as if the photographer had interrupted some deeply important task. Stang stared at the image, wondering what it was that he had been planning to do that day. It had been a Tuesday when the picture was taken, that much he remembered, and it had been raining.

Rain. Yes, he could still remember rain.

Stang peered closer, trying to discern the colour of the eyes beyond the shadow of the forehead. It was impossible to tell. The image was too small, the subtle tilt of the head too low. Why had he tilted his head down like that? Why would he have done such a stupid thing?

He could see his hand begin to shake with the effort of trying to remember. Exhaling a ragged breath, he tried to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth, forcing the air through tight lips. That’s what he had been trained to do at the Academy. All the pilots used it to combat the effects of negative G, when arcing through the sky in fighter jets. He could remember the briefing notes, even picture the diagrams that had been drawn on the white board in anatomy class. And now, he seemed to feel that exact same pressure, the weight pushing down on his chest. He had to take things slowly, step by step, not rush into something as important as remembering what colour his eyes had been.

It had been a Tuesday when the photograph had been taken. Tuesday. The word seemed to trigger something deep within his mind. Swinging round, he paced back to the main living area of the room and crouched down next to a low plastic table. Perched on one side was a large digital clock he had built, but instead of the numbers increasing they counted down in sequence. Five hundred and seventy-six hours to go. He did the calculations swiftly in his head, computing the numbers by rote.

Five hundred and seventy-six. That meant today was Tuesday 16 February.

The corners of Stang’s lips pulled upwards hesitantly as though he were practising a new type of smile. His tongue then ran across his lips in anticipation.

A padlocked metal chest lay on the far side of the table and Stang reached across for it. He then stopped himself. Today was the day, but was there enough left? The last time he had been so foolhardy, so utterly carefree, he had almost used it all up.

Taking the key from a leather string around his neck, Stang clicked open the lock. His fingers groped within the deep chest, brushing past his hunting rifle and the boxes of ammunition, until finally they felt the glossy cover of a magazine. Pulling it triumphantly on to his lap, he stroked his hand across it before finally flipping it open. As soon as the sheaves of paper parted, the faintest hint of perfume wafted towards him from the open sachet within. Immediately, his nostrils flared as he drank in every part of the wondrous scent.

There was sandalwood and ochre, both infused by some kind of exotic Arabic spice whose top notes played across the whole magnificent symphony. Raising the magazine higher, he gently squeezed the sachet stuck to the page, oozing out a single drop of the precious liquid. It bled on to the glossy paper, slowly fanning out and releasing a deep, resounding aroma. Stang let his eyes close, giving everything to his olfactory senses and letting the perfume fill every part of his brain.

He dropped back on to his haunches, almost unable to process the sheer opulence of it all. His nostrils flared one last time, drawing in every hint of the scent into his lungs, before he forced himself to slam shut the magazine. In that one moment he tried to hold on to the absolute bliss, to keep the intensity of the fragrance alive, but already he could feel it wilting, slipping from his grasp like the end of a perfect sunset. Then it was gone; swallowed by the dead air all around him.

Stang sniffed deeply, then deeper again. There was nothing.

In all the years of research and planning that had gone into this mission, nobody had ever told him that Antarctica had no smell. It was an extraordinary truth, and one that, in its own way, was almost as debilitating as his loss of sight. Not as immediate or panicked, but far more insidious.

Ten months had passed, with the long dark of winter compounding Stang’s misery. Now he hankered for smell almost as much as he had done for water. The food was no help. Every dehydrated pack was the same; a simple bureaucratic oversight, but one that had left him with hundreds upon hundreds of mashed potato sachets flavoured by some kind of ubiquitous, all-pleasing spice. He had eaten so many that he could no longer taste or smell them, his mind having long since blanked out the flavours.

In the mornings he would sometimes bury his nose in his armpit, sniffing for the slightest trace of stale sweat or body odour. Just something to prove that he was still there. But after so many months, even his own odour had gone, as if Antarctica’s dead air had finally succeeded in scrubbing him away.

After placing the copy of
Vogue
back in the metal chest and carefully padlocking it, Stang pulled himself to his feet. He stared at the digital clock, a snarl instinctively forming on his lips. Time was ticking away and Pearl would be here soon.

Richard Pearl. He forced himself not to think about the man any further. He had already lost days, maybe even weeks, to that. Finally, after so very long, time was running out.

And he still had so much to do.

LUCA STOOD BY
the snub nose of the Russian-made Ilyushin-76 aircraft. The bloated wings arced down from the top of the fuselage, giving the plane a squat, bulldog attitude. Across the trailing edge of the wings, Jet-A1 fuel leaked out through the rivets, instantly vaporising in the African sun.

Squinting against the glare, Luca walked around the front of the plane. He shook his head, never before having seen a relic of the Cold War so close up. He could see his reflection in the tinted glass of the navigator’s hatch. The glass made it appear as if the fuselage had great, gaping jaws perpetually trying to swallow the air in front of it. The plane looked incongruous against the business jets lining the apron at Cape Town International, but then again, so was its destination.

‘Go! Go!’ shouted one of the Russian loaders. It was the single English word in his vocabulary, but all that he had ever needed when dealing with the melee of scientists and construction workers who usually boarded these flights. He eyed Luca cautiously, wondering why someone would be going
into
Antarctica so late in the season. The weather was already changing, the wind and dark of winter only a week or so away. Everyone was focused on getting home before the continent shut down, with even the pilots performing their safety checks with uncharacteristic haste.

The loader paused, wincing as the sound of the massive jet engines rose in pitch. He signalled impatiently for Luca to clamber up the metal steps, bundling his kit bag after him with a well-practised disregard for its contents. At the top of the steps Luca paused, staring back at the bustling airport. It was so alive – there was colour and sound everywhere he looked. Even the air was heavy. The sea was only a few miles away and he could almost taste the salt in the air. Luca took it all in, knowing only too well that this world was the diametric opposite of the one he was about to enter.

Inside, the plane was a mess of loose wires and tubing. Cyrillic lettering was stencilled over every clean surface, while cargo netting held down hundreds of barrels of fuel that stretched deep into the belly of the plane. As Luca pulled down one of the seat flaps, the loader grabbed on to his shoulder. The noise of the engines made it impossible for him to speak so instead he mimed smoking a cigarette and then shaking his head, pointed to the barrels of fuel.

‘Yeah, I got it,’ Luca mouthed, nodding his head.

The engines’ roar intensified, each increment of power sending vibrations through the back of Luca’s seat. The pilots were holding the plane with the brakes, wringing out every possible advantage for take-off. With a lurch, they surged forward along the runway, rolling and rolling, but barely seeming to go any faster. Just as it seemed they would plough off the end of Cape Town’s three-kilometre runway, the nose pitched up and the last of the engines’ power dragged the plane into the sky.

Once airborne, Luca pulled out the files Bates had given him on each of the British scientists he was to guide across to the drill site. There were three of them, ranging from mid-thirties to early-fifties, and none of them had a shred of climbing experience. The tractors would only be able to get them so far, then they would have to navigate the mountain range to get to the lake itself. Luca shut his eyes, already feeling a twinge in his lower back. That was always the thing about bloody scientists – they never travelled light.

Reaching for his kit bag, he pulled on his fleece layers and smeared a thick wadge of suntan cream over the bridge of his nose and cheeks. Sewn into the inside lining of his fleece jacket, he could just make out the memory stick with its spyware software that Bates had given him. Letting his thumb rub over its edges, he thought back to the helicopter ride from the oil rig.

Bates had briefed him on the route he should take to get the scientists to the drill site and had been insistent they travel west over the mountain ridge, even plotting a GPS route for him to take. But the wide-frame satellite imagery had been too hazy to see the relief in detail and, now that he had hours to kill on the plane, he wondered how Bates had been so sure of the route. And why was he insistent that they should travel
west
? Surely it would be better for Luca to check the lie of the land for himself once he had actually landed in Antarctica.

But that’s the way it was with Bates. Luca could never tell whether he was holding something back or whether it was just his nature. Half-truths were his stock in trade after all. Perhaps even Bates could barely tell the difference any more.

Then again, what did it matter? Luca would load up the software on the main computer and get the scientists to the drill site. That was it. Anything more than that was none of his business.

He shut his eyes, letting the background hum of the plane wash over him. The noise and vibration were strangely soporific, while the heady fumes from the fuel barrels only intensified as the hours passed. He tried to keep himself awake, forcing his eyes open again and again, but already he knew it was hopeless. In that single moment, just as the blackness fanned out across his vision like a sunspot, he knew that he would think of Bear.

The image of her was never clear. It was more of an impression – the sensation of her next to him. He could feel her breath on his skin as she nuzzled into the crook of his neck, smell the faint scent of her long black hair. These moments were always so visceral, with Bear feeling so much a part of him that, for the first few seconds after waking up, he couldn’t tell whether he had been imagining it or not.