Holy Terror (44 page)

She looked at Eleanor and frowned. ‘Is everything OK? What's happened?'

Eleanor smiled. ‘Nothing, dear. Just saying our goodbyes.'

On Thursday morning, 473 miles north of Tromso, the sun appeared through the fog as a wan yellow smudge. Per Rakke, the fisherman, coughed and said, ‘We'll have plenty of cover today. What about some coffee? There's a flask over there.'

Conor was sitting by the misted-up cabin window, looking out at the choppy metallic waves. The strong current was flowing diagonally across the bows of Per Rakke's 35-foot fishing boat, so that it dipped and lurched sideways with every swell. Sometime during the night they had started to run into fragments of broken ice: Conor had heard them tumbling against the hull. Now there were larger lumps all around them, and soon after the sun came up Conor saw an iceberg the size of a small family house in Queens.

The cabin stank of fish and diesel oil and Per Rakke's strong cigarettes, and Conor was beginning to wonder if it had been wise of him to eat that breakfast of bread and cheese so hurriedly.

At least he was warm. He was wearing thick black canvas jeans and insulated boots, and a huge off-white parka with a fur-lined hood. He had zipped Toralf's .22 pistol in his pocket. It had a full clip but
he had been tempted to buy more ammunition for it. In the end, though, he had decided against it. Norway had strict handgun laws and he hadn't wanted to attract the attention of the Troms county police.

Occasionally another fishing boat would pass them in the fog; or they would sail close to a bleak snow-capped skerry. It wasn't hard to see why Norwegian folk stories were crowded with tales of sea serpents and sirens and the ghosts of Viking longboats.

‘It's warm today,' said Per Rakke. ‘You should come up here in the winter. It's so cold that the smoke freezes as soon as it comes out of the funnel. If you're not careful a puff of smoke can drop on your head and kill you.'

‘I'll keep an eye out,' Conor smiled. ‘What's the ambient temperature now?'

‘Six degrees below.'

‘What's that in Fahrenheit?'

‘It's easy. You double the Celsius figure and add twenty-nine. So, seventeen degrees Fahrenheit.'

Conor poured Per Rakke some coffee. The fisherman swallowed it in three blistering gulps, bulging out his cheeks as he drank. ‘You hungry? There's some pickled herring in that bag.'

The boat dropped sharply into a trough, and spray splattered against the windows. ‘Maybe later,' said Conor.

‘Well,
ja
, OK. All the more for me.'

As the afternoon wore on, they sailed up the western coast of Spitsbergen, keeping its snow-covered peaks
faintly visible through the freezing fog. They entered Isfiorden with lumps of glacial ice knocking against the hull. Per Rakke steered his boat close in to the southern side of the fiord and slowed his engine to a hoarse, asthmatic chug. On the north side, vaguely, Conor could see spectral white mountains, and scores of glaciers, each of them calving icebergs into the sea.

They passed Longyearbyen harbor – a smattering of lights on their starboard side. Conor could see a row of skeletal pylons along the shore and asked Per Rakke what they were. ‘Those are the cable cars that used to carry the coal from the mine to the wharf. The
kibb
.'

They couldn't have been making more than three knots when – without warning – a black granite headland came looming out of the fog. Per Rakke spun the fishing boat's wheel and began to bring her about. ‘This is the nearest I can sail to the harbor without anybody seeing us,' he said. ‘It's only an hour to walk from here. Not more.'

Conor opened the cabin door and stepped out onto the slippery deck. There was very little wind but the fog was bone-cracking cold, and his breath smoked. The shoreline here rose almost vertically out of the sea, and the upper reaches of the crags were draped in snow. Seagulls screamed around the boat, even though they had no catch aboard. Maybe they had caught the scent of Per Rakke's breath, thought Conor.

‘Where can I go ashore?' he called out.

‘There's a place beyond that point. The rocks slope gently right down to the sea. You'll be able to
land the rubber boat there, no trouble at all.'

No trouble at all
? thought Conor as they rounded the point. The place where the rocks were supposed to slope gently down to the sea was a tumble of enormous granite boulders, leading up to a narrow crevice. The tide continually rushed around the point, thick with broken fragments of ice the size of dining-tables for twelve. ‘There,' said Per Rakke. ‘Perfect. Almost like a holiday beach.'

‘If you say so,' said Conor. He waited by the rail while Per Rakke brought the fishing boat within seventy feet of the shore. A seagull hovered so close to him that he could have touched it and he wondered whose soul it was. Per Rakke dropped anchor and then he came forward with a wet cigarette stuck to his lower lip. A faded orange raft was lashed to the deck. He tugged the straps free and pulled the toggle. With a sharp hiss and a succession of crumpling bangs the raft inflated, filling the fore-deck. Per Rakke handed Conor two polyurethane paddles and said, ‘Row this way, toward the point. The current is very strong. It will sweep you onto the shore. If you can't make it the first time, I'll pull you back on the line, so that you can try again.'

‘Some holiday beach. What happens when I get ashore?'

‘Then I pull the raft back; and then, my friend, then you're on your own. I've given you Aslak Bolstad's address … when you've finished whatever it is you're doing, you go to him. He'll find you someone to bring you back to Tromso.'

‘OK,' said Conor, without much optimism. He went into the cabin and collected his backpack. It
contained two changes of clothing, some Lindt chocolate bars and a thermal blanket.

He helped Per Rakke topple the raft off the fore-deck into the sea. Then he swung his leg over the side and started to climb down the netting which Per Rakke had hung out for him. He hesitated for a moment and Per Rakke said, ‘By the way, there's one thing I forgot to mention. Polar bears.'

‘Polar bears? You're kidding me.'

‘Of course not. There are more than two and a half thousand on Svalbard. They're very dangerous. The chief predator, you understand. You don't usually see them near the town, but if you do, don't try to run away. Just fire your pistol in the air to frighten it off.'

‘Shouldn't I shoot it?'

‘With that little gun? No, you'll only make it mad. Something else, too: don't try to chase a polar bear. When they run they get hot very quick and that makes them mad, too.'

Conor looked with apprehension toward the shore. ‘Thanks for the warning,' he said. ‘Just hand me the paddles, will you?'

It took two or three attempts before Conor could climb into the raft. The current kept swinging it away from the side of the fishing boat and spinning it around in circles. Huge lumps of ice kept nudging against it. At last, however, he managed to get one foot in, and then the other, and throw himself into a sitting position without capsizing it. It swung around even more violently, and the bottom humped up as if Jaws had struck it from underneath. ‘Your paddles!' shouted Per Rakke,
making wild crablike gestures with his arms. ‘Use your paddles!'

Conor untangled his paddles and thrust them into the water. Up on the foredeck of the fishing boat, it hadn't seemed as if there was very much of a swell, but down here he felt as if he were going to be swamped at any moment. His face was stung by freezing spray, and every second wave slopped into the raft and gurgled noisily from one side to the other. He managed to control the raft's frustrating rotation by jamming one of his paddles against the side of the fishing boat, and then he started to row toward the point.

The only rowing he had ever done was at high school, and on the lake in Central Park – leisurely oar-pulling followed by long moments of rest. Rowing toward the shore of Isfiorden against the fast-flowing current of the Arctic Ocean was something different. He had to paddle relentlessly to keep the raft from spinning out of control, and it seemed as if he were being pitched in six different directions at once. He was only half-way toward the point before he was exhausted, his shoulders aching and his heart thumping and his breath coming in tortured wheezes.

As he neared the point, a faster current caught him. He was hurtled toward the jagged granite rocks at almost twenty knots, whirling and bucking and spinning around as he did so. He was surrounded by a white calamity of broken ice.

‘–
out
!' he heard, from Per Rakke, his hands cupped around his mouth.

‘
What
?' he screamed back.

‘
Watch out! The rocks
!' and he made a jabbing gesture with both hands.

Conor was spun around again, and then the raft was caught by a surging wave and lifted toward the rocks. He raised his paddle and imitated Per Rakke, jabbing against the granite to prevent the raft being dragged up against it. The shock through his arms was so violent that the paddle was torn out of his hands. But the raft caught the incoming current and was swirled away from the point and in toward the ‘holiday beach'.

Conor no longer had any control over the raft. With a loud thump of rubbery complaint, it was swept onto the rocks that littered the shoreline. Conor was thrown sideways and fell against the side, grazing his face on the seams. He felt the surf seething beneath him, regathering its strength, and he realized that if he didn't get out now, he would have to be hauled back to the fishing boat to try the whole bruising performance all over again. He stood up, dancing to keep his balance. Then he rolled over the side of the raft onto the shore, just as a huge icy-cold wave crashed over him. He staggered to his feet, his eyes stinging and his nose filled up with freezing brine. He leaned against a rock, knee deep in water, barking like a seal.

The orange raft was whirled off into the gloom, amongst the ice floes. Per Rakke began to haul it in with the electric winch that he used to bring his nets up. Conor managed to suppress his coughing and climb up onto the rocks, with cold water squelching in his boots. He turned and looked back to the fiord, but Per Rakke was running without
lights and his fishing boat had already melted into the fog.

Conor began the slow climb up the ravine, his feet rattling on the rocks, stopping from time to time to cough. The temperature was down to minus 3, and he couldn't help thinking of Eleanor holding his hand between hers and begging him not to go.

Once he reached the head of the ravine he stopped and rested. He had always assumed that he was fit, but climbing up through 200 feet of loose granite boulders had almost completely exhausted him. It was dark now but there was an old luminosity in the fog and he could make out the shapes of the surrounding crags. He judged that it was a two-and-a-half-mile walk over the hills to the town of Longyearbyen itself, passing close to the cemetery.

He gave himself ten minutes to recover, and then he started off again. He left the broken boulders behind and started to walk across hard, moss-covered tundra. It was always so cold here that nothing else could grow except lichens and stunted alpine bushes and little purple saxifrage. Even in the middle of summer, the soil thawed to a depth of less than a meter.

After a while, he felt the wind beginning to rise. It made a fluffing noise in his ears, and the bad news was that it was blowing against the back of his head. A north-east wind, directly from the polar ice cap, with no stopovers. The temperature noticeably
dropped, and the fog began to sidle away like a company of ghosts. The luminosity grew steadily, and he could see now that it was the reflected light of the moon, shining off the huge silvery glaciers. It wasn't long before he could see the hill behind the cemetery, with snow covering its upper slopes.

At the foot of the hill he saw an array of five or six bright lights twinkling. They were almost exactly in the configuration of the constellation Hydra, like the moles on Magda's back. He heard a faint drilling sound, too, but the wind kept snatching it away.

The wind blew harder and harder. He tightened the strings around his hood and kept his right hand raised as he walked to keep the cold out of his eyes. The seawater in his boots felt as if it had turned into crushed ice, and his toes seemed to have gone AWOL.

The constellation of lights disappeared as he descended into a valley, and it was over twenty minutes later before they reappeared, much closer this time. He was less than quarter of a mile from the cemetery and he could see that Dennis Evelyn Branch was already here in force. Under the glare of the floodlights, six or seven large Arctic tents were pitched. Three diesel generators, thickly jacketed against the cold, were providing the power. Two Mercedes trucks were parked nearby, as well as a Toyota Landcruiser and a Caterpillar excavator with a narrow-gauge shovel, the kind they used to dig drainage trenches and graves.

Seven white wooden crosses were stacked forlornly against one of the trucks – and, where they had stood, two men with jackhammers were hacking
up the tundra in dark, frozen lumps. Several other men were hammering spikes into the ground all around the excavation site, and it looked to Conor as if they were erecting the framework for the virus-proof dome.

Conor stayed well beyond the perimeter of the cemetery, ducking low behind the hillocks. A few flakes of snow tumbled in the air, and whirled around the floodlights like moths. The men continued drilling and banging, and occasionally one of them would shout something in Norwegian.

So much for Professor Haraldsen's friend, thought Conor, and his reassurance that nobody would be allowed near the cemetery except for the official expedition. Where were the Norwegian army guards? Where were the health officials?

He watched the excavation work for more than quarter of an hour. In that time, the prefabricated framework for the dome was almost completed. Rolls of heavy-duty nylon sheeting were carried from one of the Mercedes trucks and laid down beside it. The snow was thickening but that didn't seem to deter Dennis Evelyn Branch's workforce at all. They worked at frantic speed, drilling and digging and erecting aluminum struts. Conor tried to pick out Birger, but the men were all so muffled up that it was impossible to tell them apart.