Black Ice (16 page)

‘Imagine, if you can, the sensation of coming out of unconsciousness, only to find that the plane I had been travelling in had crashed. Of the crash itself I remember nothing, only coming round to find myself frozen as if in a deep freeze, stuck somewhere in the bowels of a crevasse. In front of me I could see the two pilots had been killed, and I soon realised that my own injuries meant I could not move.'

Richard paused emotionally. ‘I prepared myself to die, prepared my mind to accept that I would never see my fiancée again and that my story would, indeed, never be told. But then a knock on the fuselage told me that help was at hand. Tears of relief fell down my cheeks as I saw the heroic figure of Julian Fitzgerald swinging through the door of the shattered aircraft. That valiant man saved my life, hauling me—God only knows how—up a single rope to the comparative safety of the glacier surface above.'

Later Richard got the news that his story had been run on the front page of the next day's edition.

‘That was my first front-page byline,' he told the others at the evening meal. ‘That's something at least.'

‘You earned it,' Frank told him, sincerely. ‘Big time.'

Carl was not so quick to recover; in fact, Mel confided in Lauren that she was deeply worried about his mental state.

‘It's almost like he's lost the will to fight back,' she observed. ‘He shows no interest in eating, no interest in fighting the infections he's got, like the ordeal he's been through has put him into a state of deep shock. He just lies in his bed, sleeping twenty hours a day.'

‘Let's patch a call through for his family to talk to him,' Lauren suggested. ‘His wife's been on the radio several times wanting to make contact. That might snap him out of it.'

‘I'd rather not,' Carl told them weakly when Lauren proposed the plan.

‘But why?'

‘Because I know I have to be stuck here for the whole winter, and I won't see them for another seven months,' he said plaintively. ‘It's easier on my mind not to think about them.'

‘I can see your point,' Lauren told him gently, but added, ‘I think it's worth doing; if nothing else it will remind you there's a world out there which is waiting for you. You have to get yourself healed to be ready to go back.'

But no amount of cajoling could change Carl's mind. He merely turned over in his bed and resumed his silence.

Fitzgerald, meanwhile, was spending his time in the way he liked best, virtually living in the radio room as he conducted one interview after another. The passing days did not seem to have diminished the media's intense interest in the story, and, a week after they had returned to Capricorn, it was still going strong.

‘The man's starting to bug me,' Frank confided in Lauren. ‘Every time he tells the story he adds a few embellishments. One day the plane is sixty metres down the crevasse, the next it's a hundred.'

‘Just another way of keeping the story alive. Now he's the hero of the hour, he's trying to keep his face on the front page.'

But Lauren's relaxed attitude changed when she saw the satellite bill. In ten days, Fitzgerald had managed to rack up more than two thousand dollars of satellite time.

Lauren waited for an opportunity to speak to the explorer alone.

‘We've got to get some things straight,' Lauren told him.

‘Go on…' Fitzgerald was wary.

‘It's about your radio use. The first thing is that it's costing a fortune. Every minute eats up satellite time at seven bucks a go. That doesn't sound much, but, the amount you've been using it, it soon racks up. Basically, I don't have the budget to pay for it, and you're costing us a packet. The second thing is that I'm aware from certain feedback I'm getting from the UK that your stories are getting more and more sensational. We are a serious scientific base, Julian, but at the moment we're not much more than a sideshow to the Fitzgerald media circus.'

‘I don't see what that has to do with you,' Fitzgerald retorted. ‘I'll tell my story how I want. And if you think this publicity is bad for Capricorn, then you're wrong. All publicity is good publicity.'

‘That's not necessarily true,' Lauren objected. ‘I want the world to be focused on the science, and not on the exploits of Julian Fitzgerald.'

‘I'll use the radio as and when I bloody well like!'

With that, the explorer stormed off to his room.

33

Sean went back to his room for a shower at the end of a long session in the drilling shed, happy that the operation was going well. He'd left Frank in charge and announced he was taking half a day off.

In the sixteen days since returning from the rescue mission, his time had been devoted almost exclusively to the drilling operation, but now, with the bore sinking smoothly day by day into the ice, he could afford some time for the many personal tasks he'd had to postpone. The film he'd taken on the rescue, for example, was still waiting to be processed. Sean had been looking forward to seeing the pictures.

Sean dried himself off, dressed and went straight to his bedside locker, where he found the canister of exposed film.

He took it to the darkroom and prepared the chemicals he would need for the processing. The film was Fujicolor, chosen by Lauren for all the base photography because it was one of the few colour films which could be processed quickly and easily by hand. The developing procedure was one Sean knew well. It would take him about an hour in total.

He mixed the chemicals and cleaned out the lightproof bath in which he would soak the film. Then he extinguished the lights, working from that point in the infrared developing light which would not fog the film.

The top of the canister came off easily with a little help from his Swiss army knife. Sean extracted the length of negative, wound the film onto the spindle and slid the result into the lightproof cylinder. He agitated it gently to ensure the film was evenly coated, then screwed on the top of the processing chamber.

He switched the light back on and, satisfied with the work, left the film to sit in the bath. Thirty minutes should do it, he calculated, enough time for a quick coffee in the mess room.

Half an hour later, he was back, ready to extract the film, wash off the outer residue of chemicals and dry the emulsion.

But as soon as he unscrewed the lid of the lightproof chamber, Sean knew that something had gone wrong. He held the film up to the light, hoping he was mistaken.

He was not; the film was blank, every frame black, as if no picture had ever been taken.

Sean swore beneath his breath, wondering how the hell he had made such a mistake. Perhaps the film had never engaged on the sprocket inside the camera? But he could clearly remember the tension as he had rewound it before extracting the film. Or maybe the camera shutter had a fault?

Sean took the strip of duff film back to his room and checked out his camera. The shutter seemed to be working fine. So what on earth
had
gone wrong?

Perhaps he'd processed the wrong film.

He had to make sure. He searched again, taking out the books and notepads which filled the drawer, but he couldn't find another roll of film. He sat, perplexed, on the bed, going back over the events of the last few days to try and remember if he'd moved it for some reason, but he was absolutely certain he'd placed the film in that drawer.

Sean examined the canister itself, looking for the tiny cross he habitually scratched with his knife into the bottom of the casing when he took the film out of the camera. It was an old habit, learned from a professional photographer he'd once travelled with, a trick to ensure that an exposed film would never be mistaken for a fresh one and reloaded into a camera.

The cross wasn't there. The bottom of the canister was unmarked. Sean shook his head, totally perplexed, then decided he must have made a mistake somewhere along the line.

‘Midwinter madness already,' he told himself, then turned to other tasks.

34

Julian Fitzgerald waited until three a.m., long after he judged the last of the crew were asleep, before quietly pushing open his bedroom door. He tiptoed down the dimly lit corridor, making his way silently to the medical room where he waited for a few moments with his ear to the door. Satisfied that there was no untoward noise or murmured conversation from within, he entered the room as stealthily as he could and stood there for a minute or so to let his eyes adjust.

The room was a simple medical ward, equipped with just two beds and a curtained examination area. Richard was sleeping in the nearer of the berths, his head buried deep beneath the covers, his two plastered legs raised on pillows. Carl was in the berth nearer to the window, snoring lightly, with his head turned to face the wall.

Fitzgerald took a few steps towards Carl's bed, then froze in midstep as a sudden noise broke the calm. At first the explorer thought it was Carl moaning in his sleep, then he realised it was the window, reverberating as volleys of wind pounded against the base. He waited until the thrumming noise died down, then crouched down next to the bed, cursing the slight clicking of his joints as his knees bent.

The kitbag was pushed back against the wall. Fitzgerald had to extend his arm quite a way beneath the bed to get a grip on the fabric and slide it out. He waited a few moments to consider what was safest: open the bag here and risk the noise of the zip? Or take it out into the corridor where he could search it at leisure?

He decided on the latter, padding back out of the medical bay and rummaging through the bag until he found what he was looking for. Then he zipped the bag shut and returned it to its position beneath Carl's bed, slipping safely back into his own room less than a minute later.

Fitzgerald switched on the sidelight and lay back on the bed with Carl's diary in his hands. He flipped it open and scanned the pages, noting with some relief that it had been written in English. Carl had told him it was a habit of his to write his expedition diaries in English so that his wife Sally could share in the journey on his return, but Fitzgerald had feared the Norwegian might have lapsed back into his mother tongue if he wanted the contents to be secret.

But he hadn't, and Fitzgerald now turned to the first page and began to read:

Thursday 11 Jan. Day 37
. JF cuts back rations today. Five hundred calories less per day from now on. Cannot say how angry I am with him. Already losing weight at alarming rate. Not getting enough fats. JF has not thought this diet through properly. Bitterly regret not planning food myself.

Fitzgerald leafed through the pages, picking another at random:

Sunday 27 Jan. Day 53.
Radio batteries running low already. JF spending endless hours every night talking to the press. He ignores my reminders about how few batteries we have. If he keeps going like this, we may have to rely on emergency beacon alone. Not happy with this at all. Increasing sense that JF isn't thinking about what's ahead.

Fitzgerald had to read that part again to believe what he was seeing, then he flicked to another page:

Monday 13 Feb. Day 70.
Big row with JF over route. Cannot get through to him. Big frustration. JF insists route to east of the Harper range will be faster. I point out that westerly route is thirty miles less, but JF overrules—his theory says that this way we miss big ice fall at the eastern bottleneck. Grit my teeth and concede. Only other option is to split up—but I cannot leave him alone here.

The explorer read on, sick with the grim certainty that what he was seeing was going to get worse:

Friday 28 Feb. Day 85.
Administer third course of antibiotics to JF. His frostbite now infected. All my points about Harper range have been proved correct. This way has been hell for crevasses and much further than west route. We have lost several days with this cockup. JF increasingly isolated. Has not spoken to me for four days. Rations now cut to emergency level 2K calories per day. Extreme fatigue now. Fear malnourishment will cause us to end this soon.

A few pages on:

Wed 12 March. Day 97.
Made only three miles' progress today, but JF will not stop. We are both now starving, but he refuses to discuss rescue. Food now completely finished. Ate last chocolate bar today. Desperate hunger now constant. Missing Sally and Liv terribly. Why won't JF end this torture? Are we talking death wish? Complete breakdown of communications between us. I will have to activate beacon soon or fear the worst.

Fitzgerald snorted at the words ‘death wish'—he could just see the tabloids lapping that up. He continued to read:

Saturday 15 March. Day 100.
Flat terrain. V smooth. Point out to JF this would be good place to bring in rescue plane. Refuses and insists we continue through next large crevasse field. Barely have strength to argue with him. Constant nausea now and fear liver damage now inevitable. Both eyes now losing vision steadily.

Fitzgerald stopped reading at that point—he had to because his hands were shaking with anger. Now he was in no doubt: Carl would betray him with this diary and make a fortune in the process. Fitzgerald could just imagine the relish with which certain newspapers would serialise this diary, the pleasure his competitors would get in witnessing his reputation torn to shreds.

And so unfairly. This mess was not of his own making; it was Norland who had been so slow. But who would listen to that when this document was printed?

What action to take? A confrontation might antagonise Carl further. He could destroy the diary, but how much of this stuff would be in his companion's head—recreatable if he so desired? Fitzgerald held the book of lies in his hand, caught in an agony of indecision.

Perhaps the threat of legal action would be enough. He wished he had a copy of the pre-expedition contract he had made Carl sign. He could check the clauses, make sure it had specifically prohibited him from publishing a diary. It had certainly mentioned a book—and magazine articles—but a diary? He wasn't so sure.