Arctic Gold (14 page)

The NOAA station had been set up at least in part to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the Arctic Ocean being international waters. And McMillan and Yeats had come along with their own agenda, of course.

What is your name? the man asked, his voice disarmingly pleasant.

Katharine McMillan, she told him. There was no harm in admitting that much, and the truth would be safer than a lie.

Katharine. And my name is Feodor Golytsin. I work with a private corporation called Siberskii Masla.

McMillan had heard of it. The name meant Siberian

Oil, and it was less a private corporation than it was an arm of the Russian government.

And who, Golytsin continued, are you working for?

NOAA, she replied. That was a lie but a completely plausible one. A check of NOAA personnel files would

show her listed as an employee. That the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

I know what NOAA is, the Russian said. I suspect, however, that you are, in fact, CIA or possibly DIA. NOAA doesn’t usually have access to such high- tech equipment as what we saw you dumping into the ocean. Or

such a need for secrecy. You will tell me the truth.

I’ve told you the truth. Go screw yourself. You have no

right to

Right

does not enter into the picture, Katharine. Not here. He looked thoughtful. If you choose not to cooperate, we have several possible courses of action.

Suddenly Golytsin reached out and grabbed her, yanking her close and spinning her around so he was holding her from behind. She shrieked and tried to hit him, but he was strong enough to clamp his arms down over hers and hold her immobile. She tried kicking his kneecap, but he lifted her off the deck and grabbed her left breast, hard.

Let go of me, you bastard!

For answer, he squeezed her, painfully, through her shirt. She shrieked, Stop! Let me go!

There the crew of this ship, for instance, he continued, ignoring her squirming and her shouts. One hundred twenty- eight men on board the Lebedev. Another one hundred fifty on the Taymyr. Perhaps fifty on the Granat. And for most of them, it has been a very

long time since they’ve seen their wives and girlfriends. You are an attractive woman, Katharine. For them, you might have considerable entertainment value.

Go to hell, you sick bastard!

He released her suddenly, shoving her hard across the cabin. She tumbled into the bunk and lay there on her back, panting.

Golytsin took a step forward and bent forward, looming over her. But I imagine even you would lose your appeal after a time. How long would it take, do you think? A month? Two? If we then decided you were worthless, that we needed to dispose of you, I might order you dropped into the ocean alongside this ship. Just how long do you think you would live? The water temperature here is actually a bit below freezingminus two, maybe minus three degrees Celsius. The salt content, you know. You might survive, oh, two or three minutes.

Or better still, if we dropped you on the ice out there, somewhere. Even if we chose to return your cold weather gear, how long before you froze to death, do you think? There are lots of very hungry polar bears out along the edge of the ice pack, hunting for seal. Do you think you would still be alive when the bears found you?

In any case, Katharine, your body would never be found. Never.

I’m telling you the truth! she yelled. I’m with NOAA! I’m

Golytsin captured her jaw with one hand, silencing her, holding her head motionless. For a horrible moment, she was forced to look into his eyes. She was certain

he was about to

Then he released her. But not yet, he told her. I’ll give you some time to think about your options, mm? But I suggest, Katharine, that you not test my patience.

He turned, strode to the door, and was gone. She heard the lock click behind him.

She lay on the bunk, still breathing hard. She was terrifiedthere was no other way to describe it. She was

convinced that the bastard would do whatever he needed to do to get information out of her rape, beatings, torture

When she’d joined the National Security Agency, she’d done so as a technician, a very skilled and highly trained technician. The idea of being sent out into the field had been ludicrous; hell, as far as she knew, the NSA didn’t even have

field agents. And when she went over to the CIA, that had strictly been a temporary technical assignment.

How the hell had she let them talk her into fieldwork? This wasn’t supposed to happen!

She began reviewing her options. Not one of them, she found, was at all pleasant.

Deep Black 7 - Arctic Gold

9

Ice Station Bear

Arctic Ice Cap

82a! 24’ N, 179a! 45’ E

0125 hours, GMT12

EIGHTY- FIVE MILES FROM THE Lebedev

and twelve time zones away from London, another storm was coming in. Dr. Chris Tomlinson could see it in the dark band of clouds just beginning to shroud the southwestern horizon in shadow, could feel it in the icy bite of the freshening wind. He finished wiping the rime ice from the anemometer high in the met tower and awkwardly clambered back down the narrow ladder. It was a thrice- daily chore shared by the odd mix of personnel here at the ice station. The anemometer and other weather instruments were mounted on the fifteen- foot tower to keep them clear of wind and spray at ice level, but they still tended to accumulate a thin layer of ice under the incessant spring wind.

The sun hung just above the southeastern horizon, wan and pale and as seemingly devoid of warmth as a silvery full moon.

In a more civilized clime, 0130 was the middle of the frigging night. Late in May at these latitudes, a month before

the summer solstice, the sun never set but circled the horizon slowly clockwise with the turning of the Earth. With no real day or night, the actual time scarcely mattered, so the team ran on Eastern time. The National Climatic Data Center was in Asheville, North Carolina, and it was easier to coordinate work and communications schedules with everyone on the same clock.

Tomlinson carefully stepped off the ladder, his thick boots crunching lightly on the ice. Lieutenant Phil Segal was waiting for him at the bottomhis safety buddy, present just in case. Personnel were encouraged to go about in pairs or teams when they left the shelter of the Quonset hut that served as the small base living quarters. Tomlinson had seen for himself how fast the wind could kick up sometimes, and when it mixed with fog or blowing snow, whiteout conditions could set in so fast that someone outside could become hopelessly lost just a few short feet from safety.

Looks like we’re fixing to have a blow, Segal said, looking up at the anemometer, now wildly and freely spinning in the breeze.

Tomlinson looked up at the instrument. Ah. Thirty knots. Hardly worth the notation in the log.

Tell you what, though, the NOAA officer said with a nasty chuckle. Next time we send the tree huggers out here, right? Let them enjoy some of this here global warming first hand!

Tomlinson laughed, but without much feeling. Like the other official personnel stationed here, he had little patience with their guests, the five kids from Greenworld. What the bloody hell

did they think they were trying to prove up here?

Kids? He snorted. Hardly. The youngest was in her mid- twenties, the oldest thirty- something. But the ten regular station personnel, three NOAA officers and seven scientists

with the National Climatic Data Center, were here with a genuine purpose. The Greenworld bunch was up here grandstanding, nothing more. They claimed to be filming a documentary for PBS, but during the past week they’d done more grousing and bellyaching than camera work.

The two men trudged across the ice toward Bear One, the main hut. All told, there were four main structures in the camp and several smaller sheds and supply buildings, all of them flown up here slung beneath the belly of CH-47 helicopters and assembled on the ice. The largest, dubbed Bear One, was the center of the tiny, isolated community life and warmth. Near the building door, an American flag, already ragged in the constant wind, fluttered from a piece of pipe raised as an impromptu flagpole.

Officially, the place was the NOAA Arctic Meteorological Station Bravo, but the men and women currently living here called it Ice Station Bear a tribute, in part, to a pair of old Alistair MacLean thrillers with similar names, plus just a bit of gallows humor drawn from the latest spate of international one- upmanship with the Russians. Wrangel Island was just 760 miles distant, directly due south, and Mys Shmidta, the nearest Russian military base and staging area on the Siberian mainland, about 150 miles beyond that.

The Russian specter had been looming quite large in the tiny community thoughts lately. At least every other day, jet aircraft, military aircraft out of Mys Shmidta, had overflown the station, flying low enough to rattle the hut walls. Sometimes, the already- chancy radio communications with Asheville were blotted out by what Commander Greg Larson thought was Russian jamming.

And, of course, for the past week they’d been repeatedly warned that they were trespassing and must leave Russian territory at once.

What a crock,

Tomlinson thought. The Russians were trying to intimidate them into leaving. He wondered what the hell it was they were hiding eighty- some miles over the northern horizon and if Yeats and his people had managed to get a good look.

Three members of the NOAA expedition had left yesterday, taking three of the snowmobiles east to Remote One, an unmanned weather station seventy miles across the ice. Theoretically, they were checking the instrumentation and taking some ice- thickness readings.

The thing was, everyone in the expedition knew that Yeats and McMillan were spooks for the CIA, though that particular tidbit had not been shared with the Greenworld visitors. They also knew that Yeats, McMillan, and Hainesa genuine climatologist but also an expert on traveling over the Arctic icehad gone to Remote One more to snoop on the nearby Russian base than to check instrument packages.

Currently, the surest bets making the rounds among the scientists were that the Russians were prospecting for oil. Everyone knew they wanted to claim half the Arctic Ocean as their own in order to get at the oil and natural gas beneath the sea floor.

Yeats, McMillan, and Haines should have been back by now. There’d been a brief message five hours agoand not a word since.

Tomlinson suppressed a shudder. Something was wrong. He could feel it. They were going to have to send another team out to learn what had happened to the first. He wished they could send the Greenworld kids.

We don’t need this shit, he thought, bitter. Missing people, hostile Russians and we have to babysit, too.

He wondered if the ecology nuts had come here because the Russians wouldn’t let them go to their base instead.

Ecology nuts. Tomlinson had little respect for people who made sweeping and hyper- dramatic claims without solid scientific evidence backing them up. A number of high- profile organizationsorganizations such as Greenpeace and Greenworld and the Sierra Clubwanted to keep this frozen wilderness pristine and the petroleum resources below the ice untapped. Tree huggers,

as Tomlinson and his associates thought of the five unwanted visitors to the base, though there wasn’t a single tree for them to hug within the better part of a thousand miles. Their agenda didn’t have a chance, no matter how many polar bears they’d been able to film out on the ice. You couldn’t stop progress or the power of the almighty dollar.

What did the Greenworlders think they could accomplish by finagling a visit to Ice Station Bear?

He knew one thing. They wouldn’t have been here at all if one of them hadn’t been the daughter of a New England congressman. Raymond C. Cabot had been pulling strings at NOAA and the Department of Commerce for a month, getting permission for Lynnley Cabot and her four friends to take this little junket into the frozen north. Tomlinson wondered if Cabot was just a doting father who couldn’t say no, or if he saw a way of making political capital. Cabot was a Democrat and liked thumping the environmentalist bible loudly and often. Maybe he thought a docudrama of his darling daughter in a parka would help him with his next campaign.

Tomlinson followed Segal through the door into the hut, letting the wind bang it hard behind him. The Quonset hut interior was surprisingly cramped, given the exterior size of the thing. Half was partitioned off into sleeping quarters, with the women area sequestered off behind a curtain at the back. Another curtain hid the

chemical toilet and the tiny portable shower stall; most of the walls and available free space was occupied by boxesfood and scientific instruments. The opposite end was devoted to the radio set, two computer workstations, and the meteorology instrumentation. Clothing hung drying from various overhead hooks and hangers, creating a cluttered, humid forest of textiles. Social life inside the community was defined by the space around the stove and heater. Most of the people were there, at the moment, looking up at the sudden explosion of cold and wind from outside.

Hey, we thought you were the Russians, Tom McCauley said. He was a heavyset North Dakotan with a twisted sense of humor, who’d first used his degree in meteorology to get a job as a TV weatherman, but who later moved to Asheville to take a job with the National Climatic Data Center.

Nyet, tovarisch, Segal said, grinning as he threw back the hood of his parka. Ya nyeh Ruskii.

Too bad, Fred Masters said. He was playing cards with two other climatologists and slapped a card down on the table. We were hoping you would save us from our Greenpeace friends, here.

That Greenworld,

Lynnley Cabot said, sounding disgusted. Jackass.

Sorry, sweetie, Masters replied, picking up another card. From here I can’t tell the difference.

Ah, it easy, Fred, Susan Fritcherson said, picking up the discarded card. Greenpeace wants to save the whales. Greenworld wants the whales to inherit the Earth.

They’d do a better job running the world than we have, Ken Richardson, the ostensible leader of the Greenworld group, put in.

Pipe down, all of you, Commander Greg Larson said. He was the senior NOAA officer and the expedition team leader. I’ve told you yahoos before we don’t have the room for that kind of nonsense. Or the patience.

The bickering subsided, as it had to. The Greenworlders had been told in no uncertain terms that this base was under NOAA jurisdiction and therefore under military

jurisdiction. They would obey the regulations and the orders given by the NOAA officers or they could start walking the 650 miles across ice and open water to Point Barrow.

NOAA was a scientific agency under the aegis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Most of its employees were civilian scientists and administrators, but about four hundred of its personnel made up the NOAA Corps, one of America seven uniformed services. All were commissioned officers, wearing uniforms similar to those of the U.S. Navy.

Tomlinson stripped off his parka, boots, and snow pants, hung them on a wall hook, then squeezed into the tiny galley area to pour himself a cup of coffee. That was one good thing about this place; there was always a large pot more or less fresh brewed, and if your standards weren’t too high, it was pretty good. He’d only been outside for ten minutes, but there was ice laced through his mustache and beard.

You get through to the Center yet, Bill? he asked the man currently at the radio. Lieutenant Bill Walters was the third NOAA officer on the team, a communications specialist.

Nah, Walters said, pulling the headset off his head and tossing it on the desk. Our Russki friends are being too noisy right now. And the solar interference is worse than yesterday, too.

Cold out there, Chris? Masters asked.

Not too bad. About minus two Celsius. But it going to get colder. Another squall coming in.

Is it going to be bad? Jenny Cicero, another member of the Greenworld delegation, asked. She sounded scared. When a full gale was blowing outside, the Quonset hut walls shook and pounded as though giants were plying it with jackhammers. Such a storm had hit a few hours after the Greenworlders had arrived last week, and Tomlinson had thought they were going to have to ship Cicero back to Point Barrow in a straightjacket.

Welcome to the Arctic, kids,

he thought.

Nah, Fritcherson told her. Twenty below wind at fifty knots. Heavy snow and icing. Piece of cake.

Is Yeats going to get his people back here before it hits? Larson asked. That what I want to know.

Don’t know, sir, Walters said. They have a satcom with them, but

Maybe we should take a couple of snowmobiles out to look for them, Tomlinson suggested.

Not yet, Larson replied. I don’t want more people running around out there and maybe getting lost in a whiteout. He sounded worried.

They have GPS, Fritcherson pointed out. Even if they can’t get through the radio interference, they can navigate by satellite.

Keep trying to raise them on the satcom, Larson told Walters.

Yes, sir. But our regular frequencies are full of garbage. He listened for a moment. I think the Russians may be holding some kind of military maneuvers out there.

Nothing to do with us, Larson said. Keep at it.

Yes, sir.

Larson looked around the crowded room. Where Benford?

Sacked out, Skipper, McCauley told him, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the curtained- off bunks. Said he was wiped.