'It felt to me as though the boat dropped in the water.'

'That's what I thought. The methane lowered the surface tension.'

'Do you mean we could have sunk?'

'It's hard to say. Have you heard of the Witch's Hole?'

'No.'

'Ten years ago a fisherman set sail and never came back. His last radio transmission said he was going to make coffee. A research expedition found the wreck fifty nautical miles from the coast in an unusually deep pockmark on the North Sea floor. Sailors call the area the Witch's Hole. The wreck showed no sign of damage and was sitting upright on the seabed. It seemed to have sunk like a stone – as though it had suddenly stopped floating.'

'Sounds like the Bermuda Triangle.'

'You've put your finger on it. That's exactly the theory – the only one that stands up to scrutiny, anyway. Big blow-outs occur regularly in the area between Bermuda, Florida and Costa Rica. Sometimes there's enough gas in the atmosphere to set fire to the turbines of a plane. All it takes is a methane blow-out several times bigger than the one we just experienced and the water density falls so low that a ship sinks to the bottom.' Bohrmann pointed to the storage tanks. 'We'll get this stuff back to Kiel, run some tests and get answers about what's going on – and we will get answers, I promise you. We've already lost one man because of this mess.'

'Is he… ?'

'He was killed on impact. For the next sample we'll use the autoclave corer instead of the grab. It's safer that way. We have to find out what's happening. I'm not prepared to stand by and watch as subsea units are constructed willy-nilly all over the seabed.' Bohrmann moved away from the rails. 'But we're used to that, I guess. We're always trying to explain what's going on in the world but no one listens. And then what happens? Research is in the hands of big business. The only reason that you and I are on this boat is because Statoil found a worm. The state can't pay for science, so the money comes from industry. There's no science for the sake of enquiry, these days. This worm isn't an object of scholarly interest. It's a problem they want us to get rid of. Science always has to have an immediate application – and, preferably, one that gives industry free rein. But maybe those worms aren't really the problem. Has anyone stopped to consider that? The real problem could be elsewhere, and by solving the worm dilemma, we might make things worse.'

A few nautical miles to the north-east they excavated a dozen cores from the sediment without further incident. The autoclave corer, a five-metre-long tube clad in a plastic mantle with pipes round the outside, drew the sample from the seabed like a giant syringe. Before it was pulled back up, the tube was hermetically sealed by valves, preserving a perfect specimen of a different universe: sediment, ice, mud, an intact section of the top layer of hydrates, pore-water and even local organisms, unperturbed by the change, since temperature and pressure were maintained. Bohrmann had the sealed tubes stored upright in the walk-in freezer so as not to disturb the layers of life preserved within. The cores couldn't be analysed on board: they needed the deep-sea simulation chamber to provide the right conditions. Until then they had to content themselves with analysing pore-water and staring at the screen.

Despite the drama of the past hours, even the unchanging view of the worm-covered hydrates seemed tedious. No one felt like talking. In the faint light of the monitors everyone looked pale – Bohrmann and his scientists, the Statoil team and the crew. The dead man had joined the core samples in the freezer. The rendezvous with the Thorvaldson at the site of the planned unit had been cancelled so that they could head straight for Kristiansund, where they would hand over the body and transport the samples to the nearby airport. Johanson moved between his cabin and the control room, sorting through the responses to his survey. The worm wasn't described in any of the existing literature. No one had seen it. Some of his correspondents put forward the view that it was a Mexican ice worm, but that didn't take him any closer to the truth.

Three nautical miles from Kristiansund, Johanson received a reply from Lukas Bauer. The first positive reply – though positive wasn't really the word.

He read the message and chewed his lip thoughtfully.

Contacting the oil companies was Skaugen's business. Johanson was only expected to approach institutes and scientists with no obvious link to oil. But Bohrmann had said something after the accident that showed things in a different light.

The state can't pay for science, so the money comes from industry.

Could any institute, these days, afford to be truly independent?

If Bohrmann was right that research was kept alive by industry, there was scarcely an institute that wasn't working for a company. They raised their funds through sponsorship – it was either that or risk closing their labs. Even Geomar would soon be in receipt of a grant from the energy firm Ruhrgas, which had endowed a new chair in hydrates. Corporate sponsorship sounded tempting, but sooner or later companies expected the research they funded to be converted into profit.

Johanson returned to Bauer's message.

His own approach had been all wrong. Instead of contacting as many people as possible, he should have scrutinised the unofficial links between science and business. While Skaugen broached the topic in the companies' boardrooms, he could question the scientists they worked with. Sooner or later someone was bound to talk.

The problem lay in trying to unravel the connections.

But it wasn't a problem. It was just a lot of hard work.

He stood up and went to find Lund.

24 April

Vancouver Island and Clayoquot Sound, Canada

Anawak rocked impatiently on the balls of his feet. He rolled forwards on to his toes, then back on to his heels. Toes, heels. Toes, heels. It was early morning and the sky was lit in vivid shades of azure; a day straight out of a holiday brochure.

At the end of the wooden jetty, a seaplane was waiting. Its white fuselage shone in the deep blue water of the lagoon, contours creased by rippling waves. It was one of the legendary DHC-2 Beavers first manufactured by the Canadian firm Dc Havilland over fifty years ago. Engineers had yet to come up with a better design, so the planes were still in use. Beavers had made it to both poles: they were dependable, robust and safe.

Perfect for what Anawak was planning.

He glanced across at the red-and-white terminal. Tofino airbase was situated a few minutes out of town by car, and had little in common with other airports. It was reminiscent of a traditional hunting or fishing village, just a few low-lying timber buildings on the edge of a sweeping-bay, fringed by forested hills with mountaintops in the distance. His eyes swept the road leading from the main highway through the towering trees towards the lagoon. Any moment now the others would arrive.

His brow furrowed as he listened to the voice on his mobile. 'But that was two weeks ago,' he said. 'Two weeks without Mr. Roberts being-available, even though he specifically asked me to keep him informed.'

The secretary reminded him that Mr. Roberts was a very busy man.

'So am I,' barked Anawak. He stood still and tried to sound friendlier. 'Look, the situation on the west coast is spiralling out of control. There are clear parallels between the trouble we've got here and the incident at Inglewood. I'm sure Mr. Roberts would agree.'

There was a short pause. 'What parallels would those be?'

'Well, whales, of course. I should have thought that was obvious.'

'The Barrier Queen suffered damage to her rudder.'