Cold Blood Page 8

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Helpful.

  I felt my life ebbing away. Stedman was probably long gone.

  Then she jutted her chin. ‘Phone.’

  ‘Phone?’

  ‘Your friend.’

  ‘I don’t have his number.’

  ‘At phone.’ She gave her hands another blow and pointed to my left. ‘By toilet.’

  A breakthrough. She must be only half Russian. ‘Thanks.’

  A couple of minibuses pulled up outside and disgorged a group of excited and well-insulated Japanese hikers. They were unfeasibly energetic for that time of the morning. Perhaps this was the trip of a lifetime. Anyway, I made use of them as I didn’t want to spook Stedman if he caught sight of me. As they headed towards Departures, I jinked to the right so they were between me and the toilets.

  Sure enough, there was a row of payphones, just like the nice lady had said. An endangered species in most places, they must still have been in fashion in Svalbard because the mobile signal was shit. Stedman was hunched over a receiver.

  I held my position behind the gaggle of Japanese and watched. Even at this distance and out of earshot I could tell the call wasn’t going well. He talked rapidly, nodding for emphasis. Then he held the receiver away from his face, frowned at it in dismay, and slammed it down on the cradle. I saw his shoulders sag as he leaned his forehead against the transparent Perspex hood.

  His deflation didn’t last long. He felt in his pocket and pulled out a fistful of change, some of which fell to the floor as he tried to put it on the shelf beside the phone. It was painful to watch.

  He counted to three, pinched a couple of coins between the thumb and forefinger that were wrapped round the receiver, fed them into the slot and dialled. Then he waited a full minute.

  No answer.

  He repeated the procedure. After about forty-five seconds he spoke rapidly but in more measured tones, then listened, then dropped the phone back onto its cradle. He looked utterly defeated now, a far cry from the man who’d held court in the bar a few short hours ago. Was that the end of the money?

  ‘Hey, look who we got here!’

  I felt a hand clamp onto my shoulder.

  At first I didn’t register the face beaming down at me out of a thick, home-knitted balaclava.

  It was the Owl. Fucking great timing.

  ‘Hey.’ I tried to say it quietly. Maybe that would bring his volume down a few decibels.

  It didn’t.

  ‘So, headed out on your voyage to the top of the world?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer – he was too busy beckoning to another man. ‘Hey, Bern, it’s the crazy Brit I told you about. The guy who’s hikin’ to the goddamn Pole!’

  His voice was so loud the Japanese turned and stared. We shook hands, or rather brushed them, due to the thickness of the gloves.

  Bern didn’t show the enthusiasm the Owl seemed to be expecting.

  ‘On foot, for Chrissakes! Who does that?’

  Bern was younger than the Owl, in the same stiff, new-bought kit – another corporate suit a long way out of his comfort zone. Swathed in a huge Russian tank-commander-style fur hat and balaclava he looked comically sinister, like a kid whose mother had sent him to a fancy-dress party as a terrorist but didn’t want him to catch cold.

  A few metres away Munnelly, the oil-sniffer, was with several other men who seemed a lot more at home. None of them was talking. They kept very still, maybe conserving energy, or just bored with all that Midwestern jumpy up and down stuff, which the Owl seemed unable to control.

  I heard the clatter of a twin-rotor heli. A red Chinook was on its finals outside in the gloom, rotors feathered a few metres off the ice. The men around Munnelly came alive and picked up their bags.

  The Owl muttered to himself and patted his pockets as if they were being invaded by bees. ‘Shit, shit.’

  I peered over his shoulder. Stedman was still at the phone booth, trying to make another call. ‘You OK, mate?’

  ‘My glove. I lost it. And I don’t want these guys to know. It’s, like, your basic safety procedure, ain’t it? And they’re gonna think, well …’

  Another day, another panic attack.

  ‘I’m no good at this. I shoulda stayed at my desk.’

  Munnelly was giving him a weary look, like an RSM zeroing in on a thumbprint on a recruit’s toecap. If the Owl took his hand out of his pocket for more than ten seconds out there he’d get frostbite – a very short step to the loss of his fingers.

  I pulled out my spares. ‘I always carry an extra pair.’

  ‘My friend, you’re a true English gentleman.’ He was almost tearful.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever been called that.’ I jutted my chin in the direction of the Chinook. ‘That yours?’

  ‘Sure thing. Adios, amigo. And thanks a million.’ He saluted and scuttled off to catch up with the others.

  The Japanese had gone too. And so had Stedman.

  26

  I spotted him on a bench, hunched over his mobile, waving it around, trying to capture a signal. I walked up to him and held out my sat phone. ‘Try this. By the window. But go steady on the minutes. They’re expensive.’

  His face was taut and blotched, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot, a far cry from last night’s King of Smug. ‘Why are you here?’

  I waved in the direction of the heli desk where the Japanese ice tourists had clustered. ‘I was seeing about a trip round the island, but everything’s booked up.’

  His face was blank. His mind was on other things. ‘I’ve got to get to Barentsburg.’

  The mining settlement, run by the Russians. ‘What’s there?’

  He didn’t answer, just gazed out onto the apron, where the Arktikol Mil was parked up.

  ‘You catching a heli?’

  ‘They only take company personnel. I’ll have to go by road.’

  ‘There isn’t one.’

  He swung round. ‘What? How the fuck do you get anywhere in this shithole?’

  He was in a massive flap and I’d just made it a few degrees worse. ‘Snowmobile. It’s fifty-five, sixty Ks from here. You could do it in about three hours.’

  As well as having the means to talk, spend or bribe my way out of trouble, I’d always taken the trouble to find out where I could run to wherever I was fucking about. Around here, Barentsburg was all there was.

  ‘Yeah, very funny.’ He pointed at his stump with his remaining index finger.

  Last night he’d been the hero of the hour, his babe looking on adoringly. Seven hours on, he had shrivelled. The air had seeped out of him.

  ‘Couldn’t Jack or one of the others help you out?’

  He grimaced. ‘Shit, no.’

  Then he saw his answer had come out too fast, like whatever he was doing was something he didn’t want them to know about. ‘It’s just … someone I’ve got to meet. He was supposed to be here but …’

  ‘Right.’ I left the silence for him to fill, not moving but not questioning either.

  ‘Look, stay out of it, OK? Go and have your joy ride.’

  ‘Whatever.’ I shrugged and pocketed the phone, then stepped away. I knew his kind all too well. I’d served under men like him. Full of confidence until the shit met the fan. He’d come to his senses soon – and later on decide he’d taken control once more.

  ‘Wait – wait a sec. It’s Nick, isn’t it?’

  I turned.

  ‘You’re going sightseeing?’

  ‘That was the plan.’

  ‘Right.’

  Meek wasn’t a word I would have associated with Stedman but he had almost morphed into little-boy-lost. Probably a strategy he deployed with Leila when he wasn’t ignoring her.

  ‘Look, I can’t handle a snowmobile myself. But I could hang on.’

  I stared at him blankly.

  ‘It’s just – I’ve got to see this guy. He was supposed to RV with me here but he couldn’t make it. It’s just a meet – h
alf an hour, if that.’

  ‘This connected with you bailing out the trip?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You got the money to hire a snowmobile?’

  Another sheepish look. ‘Not immediately, no.’

  So he was begging now.

  ‘Don’t you need Leila to interpret?’

  ‘No – his English is fine.’

  But Stedman didn’t look as if fluency of conversation was the most important thing on his mind. He was bent over in his chair, his arm folded, but not in pain – not physical pain, anyway.

  ‘I have to meet him. If we don’t have the money, we don’t go. That’s it, the end.’

  He sat up, but only to slump into the chair and pull at the material that should have been covering an arm. ‘Look at me! I can’t even ride a fucking snowmobile.’

  He looked up and I was sure tears were forming. He took a series of sharp breaths to fight them back. ‘I have to get there, Nick. I need this trip. I need to do something for me. I need to show myself I’m not some fucked-up cripple. You know, you get it – everyone loves us “heroes”, but in five years’ time they won’t give a shit. I’ll just be some fucker with a blue badge on his windscreen.’

  His attempts to hold back the tears stopped working and he used his palm to wipe them away. ‘I need to know different, Nick. I need to …’

  He was getting too worked up to find the words. He didn’t need to. I understood. I did know. I did get it. This lot weren’t the first I’d come across with bits missing. It wasn’t just the physical damage they had to deal with – that could be gripped and managed – it was the mental side of things that could fuck people up even more, if it wasn’t properly addressed.

  This was the start of Stedman’s blue-badge life, and it needed to be lived as positively as his old one. He needed to prove to himself and the rest of the world that he was still the same person. Otherwise he’d just be held together by a couple of medal ribbons and a bunch of war stories that no one gave a shit about.

  I got that, and even if I wouldn’t trust him to post a letter, there was a big difference between want and need – Jack, Stedman and Will had the need.

  ‘OK, you’re on.’

  ‘There is one other thing …’

  I waited as he wiped away the final tears.

  ‘Jack can’t know about this.’ He held up his damp hand. ‘Or the meeting. None of them can …’

  27

  There weren’t any car-rental desks at the airport. Why would there be? But snowmobiles were easy to rent – as long as you were nice to Sven, whose Portakabin was just outside the terminal building. He had the monopoly.

  ‘That one?’ I pointed at the biggest, meanest machine. It had a seat-jack fitted, so I could take a passenger.

  Sven nodded approvingly. His name badge was trying hard to give his business the mega-corporate feel, but failing. The same went for the oil-covered dungarees and equally oil-stained parka, which didn’t quite protect his once white shirt and tie. ‘Ja! The Yamaha Nytro XTX. Liquid-fuelled triple with one-oh-four-nine cc four-stroke. The suspension’s got thirty-five to forty centimetres of travel but with two up will bottom out if you take any big bumps. Where you guys headed?’

  ‘Barentsburg.’

  Doubt flickered across his features, but he wasn’t about to talk himself out of some business. ‘Well, it’s pretty smooth all the way if you just follow the sat nav. Barentsburg is the first pre-set. You guys know how to use it?’

  It wasn’t just the machine we needed. Helmets and full kit were part of the deal. Our gear wasn’t nearly thick enough to withstand the core temperatures, let alone the wind chill.

  ‘You have your own guns, yes?’ He made it sound like asking if we had hats. ‘You must have weapons. In fact, you are forbidden to go without them.’

  That was very clear from the rifle-shaped plastic containers that were fitted to the side of each snowmobile, like a modern-day cowboy’s saddle holster for a Winchester to fight off all those Comanches.

  ‘It’s the law. Some problems with bears. We have about five hundred here on Spitsbergen.’

  Sven selected a pair of Mauser bolt-actions from the array of rifles and flare guns in a steel cabinet behind his desk. He held out the weapons. ‘Ah … sorry …’ He was embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t be!’ Stedman grabbed the nearest Mauser and showed us how he would aim it, pressing the butt plate into his shoulder and balancing it on his chest. Then he started to laugh and handed it to me.

  The weapon had no magazine, so I opened the bolt to check the chamber. ‘Sven, how about a flare gun for my mate here? We can scare them first, yeah? It’ll be a shame to drop one if we don’t have to.’

  Sven turned back to the rack. ‘Sure, no problem. You need one for emergencies anyway. You have met bears before?’

  ‘A few years ago, but once is enough, yeah?’

  ‘I only like to tell people who know what they’re doing to use flares – otherwise the bear gets too close. It is best for people who do not know bear to just shoot and be safe.’ He handed me something like a toy pistol, bright red with a black handgrip.

  ‘Well, at least we won’t lose it in the snow.’

  Then he held out a bubble-wrapped six-pack of flares the size of a shotgun cartridge. ‘Each one lasts for about eight seconds, and can be seen for over thirty kilometres. We don’t want to lose you out there.’

  We each pulled on an all-in-one red cold-weather jumpsuit over our own kit. Stedman refused our offers of help, so I used the time he took to load up the ten-round mag. That was all I needed. If it took more ammo than that to sort out a bear, we really would have fucked up and the bear deserved to eat us.

  Stedman finished off kitting up as I broke the flare gun like a twelve-bore, pushed home a cartridge and closed the barrel. ‘Here, loaded and made ready.’ I pointed to the right-hand side of the weapon. ‘Safety’s on.’

  Stedman shoved the thing into his left chest pocket for easy access. He zipped up and gave it a pat. ‘Dressed for bear, eh?’

  He was clearly enjoying the process. I supposed it was like the good old days, which was why I’d done it. But he shouldn’t have got too pleased with himself – he’d been a bit hasty zipping up. ‘The rest of the flares …’

  His face reddened from the neck up. He picked up the bubblewrap and put it into his right-hand breast pocket.

  Sven finished off the paperwork and checked to see if he had a signal for the card machine.

  ‘You guys have insurance?’

  I looked at Stedman. I knew the answer and so did Sven.

  ‘You must pay deposit for rescue. In case we have to come and get you.’

  Another six hundred kroner – plus a hundred a day for the bolt-action and twenty a day for the flare gun.

  Sven took my plain black card, with nothing more than a SIM embedded on the front and a magnetic strip on the back, and gave both it and me the once-over.

  ‘It’s OK. It’ll work.’

  It did look a bit dodgy, but when you had a few bob and didn’t want too many people to know where you were and what you were spending your cash on, it helped that there were still banks that valued privacy as much as I did.

  ‘You want two or three days?’ Sven almost licked his lips at the thought.

  ‘Just one.’

  His face fell as he prodded his tablet, but he wasn’t giving up easily. ‘Snow is due later. Better you stay over.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’re coming straight back.’ Stedman seemed to have recovered some of his legendary confidence. ‘Only need to be there half an hour, max.’

  Sven sighed. He wasn’t convinced, and neither was I.

  28

  I could feel my sat phone vibrating again as I slid the Mauser sling over my shoulder. I wasn’t in the mood for another earful, so left it in my pocket until it buzzed again, short and sharp. A message or a text. Much better: waffle wasn’t on the agenda.

  It was a text: Mission critical U
ABSOLUTELY must get Jack on board ASAFP. Whatever it takes.

  The question was: whose mission was he talking about? While Stedman was putting on his helmet, I called Cauldwell back. ‘Why the panic? Something changed?’

  ‘I mean it, Stone. Whatever it takes. Jack has to go with Rune.’

  ‘Why? As long as they get there, why flap about who’s paying?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. This was becoming a bit of a habit.

  ‘I don’t have time to explain and you don’t need to know. Just get Jack on board with Rune. Today. It has to be today.’

  Both money trees sounded equally dodgy to me. Stedman’s because he was Stedman, and Cauldwell’s because it had everything to do with him and what he had promised – or was getting out of the deal. I decided to go with Stedman and see what came of it. Convincing Jack wouldn’t be any easier, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

  ‘I got things to do now. I’ll call tomorrow.’

  There was no hesitation from him now: ‘No. I leave for Oslo today. The weather is closing in. It has to be today. You need to convince Jack now.’

  I glanced at Stedman in case he’d overheard the screeching, but he was busy sorting his kit. ‘I’ll call tomorrow.’ I powered down before he had a chance to answer.

  The sky was bright and clear with no sign yet of the weather Sven and Cauldwell had warned me about. The helmets had tinted visors – the snow was blinding.

  Stedman was getting impatient. ‘Can we get going now?’ He adjusted his helmet and dropped the visor.

  I took his loose sleeve and tucked it into a pocket. ‘We’ll leave as soon as you tell me who we’re meeting and why. If you’re not in the mood to share, you crack on.’

  Stedman went into used-car-salesman mode. ‘Look, I’d love to explain, but I can’t. Not yet, anyway. They want it kept quiet. There’s one last detail I need to sort, and then we’re in business.’

  I began to unzip, willing Stedman to tell me before I got the padding off. It would be a serious pain putting it back on again. I was going to take him whatever, but it would be good to know more. Knowledge was power.

  ‘You’ll get your money no matter what. I can arrange that when we get back …’