‘I think some detail here would be good.’

Our torches were fading, the batteries sapped by the cold. In the failing light, the bear carcass seemed to swell up before my eyes.

‘Let’s get out.’

We went back to the snowmobile and shared a cup of hot water from Ash’s Thermos. Eastman hammered a chocolate bar until it snapped.

‘I don’t know what Jensen told you,’ Ash said. His eyes kept darting back towards the cave. ‘We’d flown around all morning looking for bears, no luck. Then Zodiac called — they wanted him back for something. I couldn’t afford a wasted day, so I had him drop me off here. I’d heard a rumour there might be a bear near Vitangelsk.’

He scratched the back of his head. ‘It’s like all these things — the wood for the trees. I was so busy looking for a bear, I didn’t see the one that was there. But he saw me. He must have been watching for a while: they’re used to being patient.

‘I found the cave. I thought there might be a bear denning inside, so I took a peek. No bear, but I saw those strange tins at the back. I went in, looked around. Couldn’t understand what so much food was doing there.

‘I went back out. That was when I saw the bear. Juvenile, probably a year old, but with my eyes not used to the daylight, rearing up, he looked like death incarnate. No time to think. I just fired.’

He wiped his mitten across his cheek, where a tear had fallen.

‘I shot him right in the heart, just the way they teach you. Greta would have been so proud.’

Another tear appeared. He jerked his head angrily, trying to shake it away. There’s not many sights as pathetic as seeing an old man cry.

‘It was him or you. We’d all have done the same,’ I said.

‘Would you?’ He stared at me. ‘Maybe I could have done it differently. He wasn’t charging, just making a display. Trying it on. Maybe a warning shot would have scared him off.’

‘A polar bear that had you trapped with your back to the cave?’

‘That’s not the point. It’s not what might have happened; it’s what I did. One of those moments when you don’t have time to think, to intellectualise it or worry what other people will say. That’s when you find out who you really are.’

‘What you are is alive,’ said Eastman, impatiently. Ash gave him a cold look.

‘There are more important things.’

‘Not in my world.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

Ash shrugged. ‘It’s better now. The secret was murdering me. Now I know what to do.’

‘Yeah?’ said Eastman.

‘I’ll tell Quam I’m quitting. I won’t tell him why — unless either of you gentlemen feels the need to disclose it. I shan’t blame you.’

‘I can give you a medical note,’ I offered. Ten minutes ago, I’d been ready to shoot him. Now I had nothing but pity.

Eastman looked back across the valley to Vitangelsk. ‘Did you come here yesterday?’ he asked.

‘I was at Zodiac all day. Then Anderson mentioned you’d radioed in, that you’d found a bear here. I thought …’ His gaze drifted back to the cave. ‘That’s why I came.’

‘We did see a bear,’ I told him. ‘Very much alive — and all grown up.’

‘Maybe your little dead guy’s momma,’ suggested Eastman.

Ash winced. So did I. There was still a bear out there — quite possibly an angry bear nursing a grudge. And worse. If Ash wasn’t the man who’d shot at me on the tower — and you couldn’t possibly think so, looking at that poor broken man — then he was still out there too. I looked around the desolate valley, the black cliffs too steep for snow. Plenty of places for someone to hide, to watch us. I listened so hard, the silence sang in my ears.

I exchanged a look with Eastman. After a cold, sleepless night, and then this bizarre episode, I just wanted to go home.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

It was only when we were in the helicopter, safely on the way back, that I wondered what all those cans of food had been doing there.

The door opened. A sailor poked his head around the door.

‘Ops said you wanted to know when the other guy woke up?’

Franklin stood. His legs had started to go to sleep from sitting listening so long. On the bed, he could see Kennedy’s one good eye watching from behind the mummy mask.

‘Eastman?’

‘He’s ready to talk.’

Twenty-two

No one had imagined a scenario like this. The Terra Nova had four body bags aboard — the same ones that had been issued when she was first outfitted. The bodies coming out of the helicopter now were wrapped in black trash bags, laid out on the deck like so much garbage. The crew handling them looked like they wanted to puke.

Santiago met Franklin by the flight-deck door.

‘Helo just made her second run. Everyone’s accounted for — except two.’ He showed Franklin the printout. The pages were heavily creased and damp with melted snow; most of the photos had red X’s scored through them.

‘This one, Fridtjof Torell, and her, Greta Nystrom. Both missing.’

‘She was the base mechanic,’ said Franklin. Again, it felt strange to confront a photograph of someone he’d already imagined. The woman in the picture looked like a ski instructor, or one of those round-the-world solo yachtswomen: hair in braids, tanned skin, and a natural glow that said she spent a lot of time outdoors. Her tight-lipped expression only made her look like she was pissed off with the photographer.

‘When are the Brits going to arrive?’

‘Gonna be a while. They launched a plane from Longyearbyen, a Dornier 228, the only thing they could find. But they had to abort the landing. They said the runway at Zodiac had gotten too chewed up.’

‘That makes sense.’

Santiago followed the captain down the stairs towards the sickbay. ‘There’s one other thing, sir. Flying back, the pilot says he got a signal on the emergency channel. A locator beacon.’

Franklin stopped on the stairs. ‘A beacon?’

‘He couldn’t be sure. Reception’s shitty, and he said it was faint. I figure it was probably sunspots.’

‘You seen any sun around, Ops?’

Santiago acknowledged the point.

‘There’s no way Anderson walked to where we found him alone. He must have had help.’

‘You’ve got a suspicious mind, Captain.’

‘Everything about this situation gets weirder and weirder.

‘Maybe the new guy can explain some stuff.’

Bob Eastman lay in the sickbay, on the bed where Anderson had been the night before. His shaved skull looked too big for his shoulders; his beard had grown wild. His hands were wrapped, like a boxer ready for a bout. An oxygen tube snaked into his nostrils, and two more tubes plugged into his arm. He looked helpless — except for his eyes, which never stopped moving. Franklin wondered if he was suffering from some kind of post-traumatic syndrome. Who could blame him?

The eyes locked on to Franklin as he approached.

‘Do you have secure communications? I need to talk to Washington.’

Franklin held up his hands in a ‘Stop’ gesture. ‘Before you make any calls, let’s get a few things straightened out.’

‘I have to—’

‘My ship, Dr Eastman. My rules. You want to tell me what this is about?’

Eastman leaned over as far as the tubes and bandages would allow.

‘Hagger used to say, everyone who comes to Zodiac has a secret. He called it Fort Zinderneuf — like in that old movie about the French Foreign Legion. You want to guess my secret, Captain?’

Franklin considered it. He hadn’t made captain by taking half-assed guesses. As the man who’d won most of the late-night poker games at the Coast Guard Academy, he hated to show his cards. But the nature of command, and of gambling, was that sometimes you had to make a leap.

‘You work for the CIA?’