Cold Blood Read online

Cauldwell knew all about that. ‘It’s the new Great Game.’ He was clearly pleased to be back in the lecturer’s chair. ‘That’s what’s being played up here, Nick. They aren’t messing about and are getting very aggressive about “owning” the Arctic. They want what’s under the ice, and global warming is going to make it easier to get it.’

  ‘Is that why you’re in bed with Armancore?’

  He frowned. He hadn’t expected me to have heard of it. ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘OK, just making conversation. Who gives a fuck?’

  ‘Well, I’d stay focused on the job in hand, if I were you.’

  I tried very hard not to punch him. ‘So how is Jack, physically?’

  ‘Oh, he gets around all right, if that’s what you mean. We got him a bloody first-rate leg, practically as good as his old one. Better, possibly. State-of-the-art. None of that NHS rubbish. It cost more than – well, an arm and a leg.’ He snorted yet again. Maybe he felt safer in the world of the really crap joke.

  ‘And how’s his head?’

  His grimace told me I’d just crossed a line. ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know? They make far too much of that sort of thing these days.’

  Hardly an answer. I stared at him, waiting for more.

  ‘He took his time to get well, that’s for sure. But this project seems to have given him something to aim for at last.’

  It was hard to avoid the conclusion that he didn’t really know his son. ‘What about his mates? Specifically.’

  ‘A motley crew. But you know how men bond and get intense when they’re thrown together.’ Cauldwell threw his eyes skywards in exaggerated despair. ‘One’s a domestic health hazard, banned from seeing his family after he beat up their mother. Another’s still on industrial quantities of painkillers – can’t come off them. Then there’s an older chap, nearer your age, I gather, and quite sensible, who crashed his Puma. Should have known better than to get tangled up with this lot. The only one who didn’t get through the medical was Adam Stedman.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘The waster who first put the whole stupid idea into Jack’s head, back in rehab. He was the only one with two good legs, but he was trouble.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter now. He got dropped, thank Christ.’

  Cauldwell moved on to how they had all met at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Headley Court, Surrey, but it was mostly more negative stuff so I let it slide by me. His voice trailed away once he realized I’d zoned out. I saw a couple of men, pissed out of their heads, staggering along, propping each other up. When they saw us they tried to thumb a lift but one lost his balance and they collapsed in a heap.

  ‘So, anyway, Stone, I’m hoping that one way or another Jack and I can get back on better terms.’

  Right. So this was set to be the reunion from Hell. On ice.

  ‘I’m relying on you, Stone, to be an emissary. Don’t let me down.’ He pulled into a petrol station but came to a halt some way from the pumps, took out his phone and sent a text.

  ‘What happens now?’

  Before he could answer, a small Toyota SUV cruised past and pulled up just ahead of us.

  ‘Time to meet one of your fellow travellers. Part of the deal I put together.’

  The Toyota took off and we followed.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Cauldwell was now concentrating on the vehicle in front as it bounced over the ice. ‘I don’t know. I’ll explain all later. Let’s just get there.’

  7

  ‘So – who is your deal with, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, they’ve got an interest in the ice. They’re always up there, fiddling around, checking it out …’ He knew I was expecting more. ‘Environmental types.’

  ‘Change of heart for you?’

  ‘Not entirely. They survey the ice, monitoring the melt rate. It’s all very high tech – most of it goes straight over my head.’ He wafted his hands as if he was trying to dismiss the subject. It wasn’t like Cauldwell to own up to ignorance. He used to be the one who always knew better.

  ‘Why on foot?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, something to do with reading the ice.’

  More hand waving. They were barely on the wheel.

  ‘What matters is their expertise. The Arctic’s a killer. The icepack can open up and dump you in freezing water. It can pile up and stop you in your tracks. And then there’s handling the temperatures. With the sort of expertise I’m laying on, you won’t have to worry about that side of things.’

  He lapsed into silence. This was Cauldwell all over. He never had much time for detail in the military, just wanted the job done.

  I couldn’t tell if this was his way of trying to make amends for being a less than perfect father, press-ganging Jack into the army only to have his leg blown off. One thing was certain: with all the negativity coming off him, I wasn’t surprised Jack had been giving him a wide berth.

  The Toyota turned up a narrow road bordered on each side by faded red or blue wooden buildings. Cauldwell let the wheels spin and the vehicle fishtailed wildly. ‘Fucking ice rink.’ He got it back into shape, and as we gained a bit of height I looked back over the drab, neat town, with the looming mountains crowded round it. Apart from the houses, everything was either grey or brown, standard municipal and grim, reminiscent of any number of barracks or similar shitholes I’d been in over the years. I almost felt at home.

  ‘Why all the cloak-and-dagger – meeting up in garage forecourts?’

  He brushed it off. ‘There’s all sorts round here, and the people I’ve done the deal with aren’t too popular with some of the other traffic through here right now. There’s plenty of interest in what’s going on up there, so they keep a low profile. This is a small town.’

  ‘Interest … As in oil and gas?’ The Owl’s terrified face flashed up briefly on the screen inside my head.

  Cauldwell’s hands were flapping again. ‘All kinds of things.’

  ‘But if they’re trying to protect the ice, aren’t they the good guys?’

  ‘Ah, well, that depends on your point of view.’

  His answers were all dismissive. But I wasn’t ready to be dismissed, and he knew it. His impatience was starting to show through again.

  ‘Look, this isn’t one of those missions that needs three-hundred-and-sixty-degree knowledge. It’s just a tab across the ice, OK?’

  The building was as nondescript as you could get, a grey wooden box with a steep, gabled roof. As the Toyota approached, a roller-door opened. The vehicle turned in and came to a stop beside a couple of snowmobiles and the world’s supply of expedition gear. Tents, sleeping bags, stoves, airbeds, shovels, all box-fresh. Cauldwell pulled in next to it and the door closed behind us. A knitted yellow yeti hat, accompanied by a matching hipster beard, jumped out of the Toyota and waved.

  Cauldwell got out and strode up to their owner, hand extended, but the guy ignored it and locked him in a hug, which Cauldwell tried and failed to evade.

  As soon as he could breathe again, Cauldwell introduced us. ‘This is Nick Stone, the man who’ll be joining you. Nick, meet Rune Vargen.’

  8

  Close up, Cauldwell’s new best friend looked like something that had fallen off the troll shelf at Toys R Us. He turned to me with the same grin but didn’t do the hug. He just pumped my hand as he greeted me with an accent straight out of a yogurt commercial. ‘We are so happy to be your partners on this courageous venture. Your country must be so proud of what you are planning to do.’

  He glanced down at my legs.

  ‘Stone’s here for back-up.’

  ‘Ah … of course.’

  The hint of hesitation told me my presence had been sprung on him too. But it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm as he herded us towards a steep flight of stairs. ‘Yes. And, let me say, it’s a great honour to be embarking on this adventure. We are privileged to be considered by Mr Cauldwell to act as your supp
ort, and it’s a tribute to the historic friendship between the peoples of Norway and the, er, great nation of, er, Great Britain.’

  He was putting on a big show for an audience of two, but Cauldwell seemed to rise to it. He went into G7 Summit mode. ‘Yes, absolutely. And we’re equally grateful to you for stepping in at such short notice. Without you and your people this expedition would have had to be put on ice … er … as it were.’

  This time his laugh was tentative, and with good reason.

  Rune looked confused, then beamed. ‘Ah – oh, yes, English joke. Very good! Come, come.’

  He shepherded us up the steep wooden stairs to the upper level where there was a small office set-up among a collection of ancient sofas that had been covered with blankets to hide their sins, and to provide a clean enough place to put a sleeping bag.

  The work space consisted of a table and chairs, a coffee machine and an open packet of Axa Go’mix, a Norwegian breakfast cereal. A couple of thick, ancient-looking woollen coats hung from hooks by the door.

  A big dog-eared poster of what Svalbard looked like in the summer – pretty much the same as it did now, with a bit less snow below the peaks – took up most of the opposite wall, which it shared with a rack containing two well-worn bolt-action hunting rifles. The varnish on their wooden furniture had been worn away years ago. There was another steep set of stairs to a bunk-bed with a blue sleeping bag spilling out of it. Rune followed my gaze and hurriedly reached up to push the bag out of sight. The place resembled a student crash pad.

  ‘This your HQ?’

  ‘No, I use it when I’m up here. I am sorry for the drawn-out way you arrived but I like to keep my distance from everyone here. My work is not understood by many.’

  ‘Cauldwell explained.’

  ‘Coffee, or something stronger?’

  ‘Coffee’s fine.’

  Rune pulled off his duvet. Without it, he turned into a round-shouldered, skinny-armed forty-something, with a small pot belly that suggested years spent bending over a microscope or a computer screen rather than braving the most extreme weather on the planet. And the big beard fanning out from his chin was now less hipster and more garden gnome.

  Nothing about him filled me with confidence. Most brainy people’s bodies just provide them with the equipment to get their heads to meetings. But appearances can be misleading at ground level too. Cauldwell might have lost a fortune – and had a blind spot when it came to his boy – but he wasn’t a complete dickhead. He wouldn’t have let this cartoon Scandinavian anywhere near the expedition if he didn’t know his stuff. Rune rubbed his hands together eagerly.

  ‘Would you like to see my presentation?’ He gave a nervous chuckle. ‘Don’t worry, it is only ten slides.’

  He apologized that the coffee machine was kaput, boiled a saucepan of water and made a couple of mugs of instant, then dug a carton of UHT milk out of an otherwise empty cupboard and put the whole lot in front of us. ‘Help yourselves.’

  He opened a lumpy old Sony laptop, the sort that gamers lugged around in a shopping trolley. ‘This won’t take long, I promise.’

  I didn’t hold my breath. Powering that thing up would take time. Its lid had so many stickers on it, from Greenpeace to the Co-op, that they were probably holding the thing together. He flipped it open, and as the screen decided if it wanted to spark up or not, he sorted through a collection of USB sticks on a key ring. Eventually he got the one he was after and married it up with the laptop, which had finally decided to play ball. It must have been friendly, because it didn’t even ask for a password.

  I’ve never been much of a PowerPoint fan, and it was all I could do to stay awake as he launched into his spiel. But I did my best, figuring that something might come in useful later. The gist was that while everyone seemed to agree the icepack was shrinking each year because it was getting warmer – the temperature in Longyearbyen was a little higher than it had been the year before – no one knew which chunk of the stuff that covered the six-million-square-mile polar ocean was most prone to erosion. Rune’s mission in life was to shed some light on this by planting a series of monitors from the edge of the pack all the way to the Pole.

  He snapped the lid shut and gave us another high-wattage grin. ‘So you can see that we are the perfect people for you to team up with, yes?’

  For a moment I felt like I’d wandered into a tree-huggers’ strategy meeting. Cauldwell, I could see, was struggling to pay attention – clearly his mind was elsewhere.

  What I still didn’t get was why Rune would be so willing to partner up with Cauldwell’s bunch of basket cases.

  As soon as it was over, Cauldwell clapped his hands. ‘Very good show. Cracking stuff.’

  Rune looked delighted and relieved – as if he’d been pitching for a job rather than doing him a big favour – then turned to see if I felt the same.

  ‘Yeah, very interesting, thanks. But I still don’t get why you need us along.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cauldwell purse his lips. He had always hated being quizzed about detail but I didn’t give a fuck about that. He gave his answer before Rune could open his mouth. ‘Oh, you know, like I explained in the G-Wagen, people like Rune and his group aren’t viewed kindly by some so-called experts round here or the energy industry generally. This way, they can do their work undercover – no one’s worried about a group skiing to the Pole. Helps smooth the way, good old-fashioned heroism, that sort of thing …’

  ‘Yeah, and?’ I looked at Rune. Maybe he could come up with something more convincing.

  He flapped his arms and glanced around the room for inspiration as Cauldwell cut back in: ‘What our Norwegian friend here is too modest to tell you is that his organization is all about the benefit to the environment and to society. That’s what motivates him. Call it idealistic, call it whatever, but that’s his thing.’

  Rune glowed with relief.

  ‘And your organization? What does it consist of?’

  ‘Just me, really. When I need help, I call on our friends.’ He nodded eagerly, as if this was going to fill me with confidence, but his eyes kept flicking to Cauldwell. ‘I like to keep things light and simple. Not hire people then have to let them go, you know. And smaller overheads is more ecological. Sustainability is the future.’

  My thoughts went back to the Owl and his oil-sniffing friend. ‘Well, I’m all for saving the planet, what’s left of it. So maybe you’ve got a view about all these oil people up here.’

  Rune laughed nervously. ‘Well—’

  Cauldwell cut across him again: ‘Look, we haven’t got time to go into all that right now, have we? It’s hardly relevant.’

  Whatever. I was tempted to keep probing just because it got up Cauldwell’s nose, but what mattered to me much more was the expertise Rune was planning to bring with him. Walking to the Pole, as Cauldwell had already warned, wasn’t for amateurs – however many legs they had – and having this pot-bellied dwarf along for the ride wasn’t going to change that overnight. ‘When do I meet the rest of your team?’

  9

  Rune looked blank.

  ‘You know, the guys who are going to show us the way to the Pole.’

  He coughed. ‘Yes, yes. They will be flying in very soon. You will like them for sure. Special-forces-trained, with Arctic speciality, and capability for all thinkable situations.’

  Cauldwell joined in the nod-fest – though he knew very well that I wasn’t going to take Rune’s word for it. Practically every chancer on the circuit claimed SF credentials. I didn’t give much of a shit what happened to me right now, but if this was going to be done properly – and I’d be herding a group of lads towards the most northerly point on the planet – I’d need some good backup. ‘Do you have their CVs or profiles?’

  Cauldwell waved away the question. ‘Oh, they’re top people, don’t you worry, Stone. You don’t have to check everything. Leave that to me.’

  My questions were pissing him off. But what did he exp
ect? He knew well enough that I was a life member of the awkward squad. I wasn’t going to take any of this at face value. If the army taught you anything, it was to check everything before any operation, then check it again. But he was determined to shut me down.

  ‘You’ll just have to take my word for it, Stone. These people are all first class. I wouldn’t be involving them if they weren’t. And time is of the essence.’

  ‘Yeah, and remind me why?’

  Cauldwell was really exasperated now and part of me was enjoying it. ‘Because time is money, isn’t it? We need momentum. Get the job done and move on. Right, Rune?’

  Once more Rune nodded dutifully. ‘And your men are all prepared and ready to go?’ he asked me.

  Cauldwell butted in again: ‘Goodness, yes. All fighting fit and ready for the fray.’

  That was an interesting change of attitude. Ten minutes ago Cauldwell had had Jack’s mates written off.

  To me he said, ‘That kit downstairs? All for the trip, handpicked by Rune’s chaps. I’ve got them the very best of everything they need.’

  The Norwegian was nodding rapidly. ‘Good, good, because we have to move quickly. The window of opportunity is very narrow.’

  Maybe Rune had been railroaded into this and I wasn’t the only one looking for answers. ‘I don’t think speed is going to be one of their assets.’

  Once again Cauldwell weighed in: ‘Rune just means the route is only open for a short period. There is an airstrip on the ice but it’s only operational for a few weeks.’

  Rune agreed.

  Fine. Whatever. I didn’t want to hang around either.

  ‘To get back to the point – soon as we can, Rune, we’ll get you to meet the team. Jack’s a first-rate chap.’

  Rune stepped away to take a phone call and I shrugged a ‘What the fuck?’ at Cauldwell.

  He glared right back. ‘Look, Stone, frankly, it’s all a bit of a scramble. This situation only came up forty-eight hours ago, but it solves a lot of problems for everybody. So let’s not sound like we’re looking any gift horses in the mouth, OK?’