Beneath the Ice (7 page)

All he had done was leave her a message. A single voicemail informing her that he was off to Antarctica and that Kieran Bates was her point of contact if she needed to get in touch. Upon reflection, Luca didn’t really know why he had left the message in the first place, but it had seemed to him that
someone
needed to know where he was going. He had no brothers or sisters, and had barely spoken to his parents since his teenage years. On the rare occasions when life did bring them together, all that remained was an unspoken animosity coupled with a genuine confusion as to how such different people could share the same genes.

So Luca had rung Bear, and even now could hear the recrimination in his own voice. It was that same perfunctory tone he used to shut everyone out. It was always like that. No matter how hard he tried to say what he felt, there was always this unspoken anger, this wall between them.

At the beginning of their relationship, Luca had been amazed by how quickly he and Bear had seemed to accept each other. There wasn’t any of the usual fear he had experienced in the past. Instead, it felt entirely natural to have her with him, as if it had always been so.

But just in that one moment, that tipping point where their relationship would have taken shape and solidified into something more meaningful, it suddenly became much more complicated. The issue of her son grew and grew, gnawing away at every other part of their lives. It was terrifying how fast it all seemed to happen; the doubts and ill feeling spreading like a cancer. The very togetherness they had felt at the beginning of their relationship soon twisted into a resentment that was equally palpable. On it went, day after day, without Luca facing up to the real issues. Finally, all he could think to do was run.

He sighed, slumping back into the uncomfortable seat of the plane. Why did he always cut away like that? Why did he always choose solitude over confrontation? Shaking his head, he wondered whether Bear had even listened to the message in the first place. With all that had happened, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had deleted it straight away.

‘Go! Go!’ came the loader’s voice, rousing him from his thoughts. This time he was gesturing to Luca to don the last of his outer clothing. They were nearly there.

As Luca looked about him, he realised the light outside the plane had changed. Through the single porthole in the cargo bay, he could see the first ice as they passed through the Antarctic Circle and into perpetual daylight. Beneath him were immense tabular icebergs, forerunners of the mighty continent ahead, while a shimmering, yellow light haloed the horizon. It was the sun’s rays being reflected back into the sky by the sheer mass of ice that was Antarctica.

Luca had seen mountains and glaciers before, but never anything on this scale. Antarctica was simply titanic. Stretching out before him was an entire new world, one that had been waiting there all along around the underside of the globe. Antarctica – the only land on the planet not owned by a single nation. The last great wilderness on earth.

There was a clunk as the landing gear unfurled. Then, as the plane descended on its final approach, a horizon of ice seemed to rise up above the porthole. Suddenly everything went white.

The plane thumped down on the runway, sending a metallic ripple through the fuel drums. As the engines roared in reverse thrust, clouds of loose snow blew up past the wingtips, reducing visibility to zero. On they went, the speed gradually bleeding off with each metre as they approached the end section of the runway, until the enormous machine finally ground to a halt. Before the noise of the engines had even wound down, the main door was heaved open and a bitter cold came rushing inside. It sucked out the warm, stale air from the flight, replacing it with a bone-dry cold that pierced Luca’s lungs.

Getting to his feet, he grabbed his rucksack and moved over to the door. Beyond was a landscape of unending ice, stretching out as far as he could see. ‘English!’

He looked down to see a man standing on the edge of the runway with his arms held wide. He was wearing a one-piece padded suit that seemed to accentuate his already bulbous waistline. Evidently the suit had once been bright red, but now the fabric more resembled the colour of the engine grease splattered across its knees and chest.

The man’s bushy beard looked like a continuation of the fur lining of his jacket, while his cheeks were tanned the colour of mahogany. As Luca descended the steps of the plane, the man’s dark brown eyes stared at him unflinchingly from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. After a moment’s reflection he grunted, as if he had been anticipating something more. Then he pulled himself to his full height and shook Luca’s hand.

‘I am Vladimir Dedov, base commander of GARI,’ he said, crunching Luca’s knuckles in a bear-like paw. He then wagged one finger of his gloved hand beneath Luca’s nose as if about to impart a rare nugget of wisdom. ‘And if
I
like you, you can call me “Poet”.’

‘Matthews,’ Luca said, already wondering why someone as important as the base commander was here to collect him. It just wasn’t the Russian way. He’d seen the strict sense of hierarchy before, like some hangover from the Soviet past. The base commander being here meant one of only two things: either somebody deemed Luca very important, or Dedov had lost control of the base.

The Russian sniffed loudly, wiping his nose with the back of his glove.

‘It’s cold out. Let’s go.’

Motioning for Luca to get on board the tractor parked behind them, Dedov barked a few orders in Russian towards the plane loaders before clambering up into the driver’s seat. They jumped at the sound of his voice, scurrying off without a second’s hesitation.

‘Now,’ he said, half turning to Luca, ‘if you are going to work at my base, I want to have a picture of your family and to know where they live.’ He paused, locking his gaze on the newcomer. ‘Just in case,’ he added by way of explanation.

Luca stared at him, mind racing. The seconds passed in silence before Dedov suddenly grabbed Luca’s shoulder, jostling it roughly.

‘I make joke!’ He beamed, his massive frame shaking with hilarity and causing his glasses to slip to the end of his nose. ‘All Westerners think Russians are like gangster.’

‘I didn’t . . .’

‘But I make joke on this,’ Dedov continued, obviously pleased with himself. As the shaking of his shoulders finally abated, he sniffed the air, nostrils flaring widely.

‘Only
some
are gangster,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Since collapse of Soviet times, only men with connections rise to top. They are like fat cream on milk.
They
are the ones that are gangster.’ He spat the words out as if they were leaving an unpleasant taste in his mouth. ‘A long time ago, I chose to come to Antarctica because, in this place, we have no such people. Here, we are free.’

He lit a cigarette, letting the smoke hang in the air for a moment before inching open the tractor’s window.

‘But even here, it is not like Lenin’s dream. Everyone is not equal.’ A smile passed across his face. ‘How do your pigs say? Some are more equal than others!’

Dedov looked across to Luca for confirmation, but quickly realised that there would be little in the way of small talk.

‘So, report says you are big climbing man. Real alpinist,’ he queried, clearly doubting such an accolade. ‘You climbed in Russia?’

‘No.’

‘Nowhere in whole of Russia?’

‘It doesn’t have any high mountains,’ Luca replied. ‘I climbed in the old Soviet bloc.’

‘Hah! Russia. Soviet. You had your empire. We had ours. But tell me, what mountain?’

Luca remained silent for a moment, not feeling the need to justify himself by listing his climbing CV. In his prime, he had climbed all over the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, successfully summiting almost all of the most technically challenging routes. However, most people only knew the names of the highest peaks, so he kept it simple.

‘I put a new route up Pobeda in the Tien Shan.’

‘Pobeda? I heard of this mountain. It is famous in Russia as mighty seven-thousand-metre peak! If you climb it you have title of snow leopard,
da
?’

Luca nodded vaguely. ‘Something like that.’

‘Well, Snow Leopard,’ Dedov intoned, as the glow of his cigarette faded, ‘you have only a few days to get
your
scientists to drill site. We have done the hard work and broken into lake. But I will not allow that hole to re-seal without samples.’

With an air of finality, Dedov stubbed out what remained of the cigarette into an old pocket watchcase and snapped it shut, disposing of the crooked filter. His eyes tilted back to the horizon as he slowly shook his head.

‘At least some good must come of all this,’ he muttered to himself.

The Global Antarctic Research Institute, or GARI as it was commonly known, was a monstrous blue structure raised like a spider on squat, metallic legs. It looked futuristic, as if designed for another world entirely, with separate living modules connected via gangplanks and spaced out in a horizontal line. The closest module rose thirty feet above the top of the tractor, dwarfing the vehicle as they passed directly between the building’s legs and into a garaging unit on the far side.

‘New international base,’ Dedov said, with obvious pride. ‘GARI can accommodate ninety-two people in summertime, with two separate generator houses. Different modules mean if there is fire, you can close off and move to next one.’

‘Incredible,’ Luca muttered, peering out through the window at the underside of the beast. ‘It’s like something out of
Star Wars
.’

‘Wars?’ Dedov repeated. ‘No wars in Antarctica! Only place on planet where we have no war. No military allowed here. Only scientist.’

As the garage roller door ground down towards the floor, Dedov pulled the tractor to a halt. Before Luca had a chance to open the passenger door the Russian turned towards him, grave-faced.

‘Whole base was built by four governments. But only one task: to drill into special lake.’ He reached out for Luca’s shoulder. ‘Now you see why it is important for you to succeed. If lake is lost, if hole re-seals and we fail to get samples, science will fail too.’

‘I’ll get the guys to the drill site,’ Luca replied. Then, looking out to the far side of the vast hangar, he spotted the silhouette of a small helicopter, the front end covered in thick tarpaulin. ‘Why don’t you just use that thing to get there?’

Dedov followed the direction of his gaze. ‘It is not ours, and it is broken. Apparently, it needs special part.’

‘So fly the part in on the Ilyushin.’

‘And who will fix it? You? Anyway, it is not one part. Apparently it is many.’

‘What about other planes then? Aren’t there smaller ones fitted with skis?’

‘
Da
,’ Dedov agreed, with a nod of his bulbous head. ‘We have such planes in summer. We have Twin Otter plane, Antonov-2. Even, sometimes, there is DC-3 Basler.’

‘So where are they now?’

‘The birds have flown. Soon there will be last light here and small planes have to fly back to mainland before the start of winter. They hop along coast, from one science base to next, and go out of Antarctica via the peninsula.’

He slapped Luca on the shoulder, abandoning the topic. ‘So you have to use the old-fashioned way, like a proper polar explorer! But you must move fast.’

Luca met his gaze. ‘I can move as soon as the scientists are ready. I’ve already got a routing on my map that we can follow.’

‘Map? Let me see.’

Luca pulled out the laminated paper, folded into a neat square. Dedov took it from his grasp. Tilting his head forward to peer over the top of his glasses, he followed the plotted course. After a moment’s pause, he handed it back.

‘This route is no good,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘You have no time and quickest way is
east
around mountain rim. Not west.’

‘I was given instructions. My contact was specific on this point.’

‘Then your contact was wrong.’

Dedov was about to say something more when his head tilted forward. His eyes seemed to zero in on the single beam of light that shone through a skylight on the right-hand side of the hangar. His eyes watered slightly, while Luca could see a thick vein on the side of his neck start to pulse.

‘Please go into the base and meet rest of team,’ the Russian said, nodding slightly towards the door at the far end of the hangar. ‘It is that way.’

‘You not coming in?’

‘Regretfully, I have a radio call to make.’

Luca hesitated, wondering why he would choose to sit inside the garage to make a call, but Dedov remained motionless, obviously waiting for him to leave. Luca swung open the tractor’s door and, without another word, walked away into the main part of the base.

Only once he was out of sight did Dedov try to lift his hand off the steering wheel. His fist was locked tight, the muscles in his forearm straining.

‘The light. Don’t look at the light.’ Dedov whispered the words out loud, but already he could feel his gaze being inexorably drawn towards the single beam flooding into the cavernous space. It was mesmeric, commanding his attention until his whole face twisted up towards it as if enraptured by the sight.

His jaw tightened, back molars grinding together. He groaned, knowing this was the precursor to yet another seizure. They were coming more regularly now, virtually every two days.

Suddenly his body snapped backwards, his back arching while his arms curled up close to his chest. His fingers wrung the air as if clawing at some imaginary foe. He gurgled, neck straining as spittle began to foam out of the corners of his mouth. The colour drained from his face while his upper lip pulled back from his teeth making it look as if a terrible, demonic force had suddenly taken hold of him.

He tried to hold on, to control the seizure in some way, but it ripped through him like an electric current. On it went, foam spilling out across his beard and pooling on the faded leather seat of the tractor. He could feel his peripheral vision darkening with just the single shard of light now visible before him. He clung to it, every part of his being reaching towards the light.