My brain was working overtime, like I’d drunk three cups of coffee on top of a NoDoz. ‘How’s this? Hagger and Quam were in this together, working for the Russians. Hagger faked his data so he would get the funding to come to Zodiac. But he did it in a dumb way, and someone figured it out. Quam got pissed off, because Hagger had drawn suspicion on them; he went up to the Helbreen to bitch Hagger out. Someone lost their temper, there was shoving, and Hagger bit the dust.’

‘So what do we do now? Confront Quam?’

‘We don’t have enough evidence.’

‘But Jensen—’

‘Proves nothing. Quam can bluff that out. You have any idea how dangerous he is? If he thinks we’ve figured him out, he’ll disappear us down the nearest ravine.’ I flexed my fingers. Even inside the mittens, they’d begun to go numb. ‘We need proof.’

‘How?’

I grinned. ‘I’ll break into his office tonight.’

Kennedy looked unhappy, but it was only a mild case of morals. Hell, it’s not even breaking in if there isn’t a lock.

‘And you keep an eye on Anderson. Either he’s one unlucky son of a bitch — or he’s more dangerous than we can imagine.’

I turned for the door. ‘Let’s get back to the Platform. It’s too fucking cold out here.’

Outside, the storm hadn’t died down any. The second I opened the door, I got a face full of ice. We were straight into the wind now, and it cut right through to the bone. Forget the flag line, or the lights on the Platform. The visibility was so bad I could barely see Doc six feet in front of me. I had to hope like hell he could see where he was going.

It felt like it took for ever. At first, I assumed it was the wind and the cold and hating every second. But even then, we should have made it eventually. Looking ahead, I couldn’t even see the Platform lights.

I tugged on the rope. Doc stopped and waited for me to catch him up.

‘Are we going the right way?’ I had to pull aside his hood and put my mouth almost against his ear so he could hear me over the roar of the wind.

He shrugged, and pointed to the marker post just in front of him. Still on track.

OK. We went on, heads down, faces frozen, not even bothering to wipe off the snow that gathered in the creases on our coats. I started to think about all the guys who went out in the snow and nearly died, Victorian explorers who thought a tweed suit and a pocket watch were all you needed for polar expeditions. Was this how they died? Walking on, bent lower and lower, until finally they collapsed face first and never got up? Not one of my life’s ambitions.

The rope went tight so fast it almost knocked me on my ass. Before I could wonder what the hell Doc was playing at, I was being pulled forward, jogging over the ice in a crab run I couldn’t control.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I had to stop it before we both got killed. I kicked my heels into the snow, trying to get a hold. Couldn’t. The rope pulled me on, my feet skidding over the snow like I was skiing. Ahead, through the chaos in the air, I could see a dark scar cutting across the ground, and the rope dropping into it.

The gulch. The crack at the edge of the glacier. I could just about see some of the warning poles whipping about in the storm. How the hell did we get here?

It was too close. The rope wasn’t long enough, and I was going too fast. I pulled off my mittens and reached for the knot around my waist, scrabbling to undo it. Kennedy was screwed either way, but maybe I could save myself.

With so much tension, the knot was never going to come undone. Normally, I carry a penknife in my pants pocket, but I’d taken it out to go to the mag hut. I was fucked. I wondered whether if I landed on top of Kennedy, he’d break my fall.

You know what saved me? The wind. An Arctic storm blowing fifty knots in your face is one hell of a brake. It slowed me down enough that I could dig my heels into the snow. I leaned back almost forty-five degrees. The wind, Kennedy’s weight on the rope, friction and gravity came into perfect equilibrium. I was weightless.

I’d stopped.

Then the hard work began. Inch by inch, I hauled myself back. The first three steps almost broke my back; each time I lifted my foot, I thought I’d lose it completely and go right over the edge. But it got easier. Once he stopped falling, Kennedy’d managed to get his feet against the ice wall to brace himself. As I pulled, he was able to walk up, taking some of the weight. The wind kept pushing me, so hard that when Kennedy finally made it up I lost my balance and sat down hard on a bare sheet of ice.

The rope went slack. A dark figure staggered out of the storm, covered all over in snow like fucking Bigfoot. He crouched beside me.

‘That’s the last time I let you go first,’ I shouted at him.

He shook his head. ‘I followed the flag line.’

He was right. I’d seen it too, the red poles every ten feet, all the way from the mag hut.

‘Someone moved the poles.’ It was the only explanation. Someone had actually tried to kill us. It was a hell of a thought.

If he thinks we’ve figured him out, he’ll disappear us down the nearest ravine. Christ, I didn’t mean it that literally.

And if I didn’t get off my ass and out of that storm soon, he’d have succeeded. My hands were already ice, and God knows where I’d dropped my gloves. They were probably halfway to Siberia by now. Pulling out Kennedy had cost me most of my strength: even in my ECW gear, I couldn’t stop shivering. In those conditions, that gives you less than five minutes.

I stuck my hands in my coat pockets. At least it kept the wind off of them. Kennedy put his arm around me, and together we stumbled our way back along the flag line. If it led straight from the mag hut to the gulch, I had a pretty good idea where the Platform ought to be. Soon, off to our right, I saw a dim glow. We broke towards it. The lights got brighter. Now I could see the steel legs, rigid in the chaos. Best goddam sight I ever saw in my life.

I just managed to get up the stairs, kick the bar to open the door and fall inside the vestibule. I couldn’t even get my gear off. Kennedy had to unzip me and pull off my coat. His hands were shaking almost as bad as mine.

‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Did someone just try to kill us?’

‘Look on the bright side.’ Hunched over on the bench, I looked around the boot room. A few of the other coats were still wet with melted snow: Quam’s, Greta’s and Fridge’s. Anderson’s wasn’t there at all. A lot of people to be out on a shitty night like that.

‘At least if they’re trying to kill us, we have to be on the right track.’

Thirty

It fries your brain when you wake in the night and it’s daylight outside. Humans are tropical mammals; we like some darkness in our lives. Spending summer in the Arctic is like being dumped on the bright side of the moon.

Not that there was a whole lot of daylight that morning. The storm had died down, but it was still blowing strong. I could hear it moaning through the antennas. It’s lucky I don’t believe in ghosts.

After we came in from the mag hut, after I defrosted my hands, I’d gone in to the mess. Some of the others had gone to bed, most were still decorating for Thing Night, listening to music and drinking a few beers. Quam was in his office.

There was no point asking if anyone had gone out while we were in the mag hut. People had been coming and going all evening. Whoever did it, I didn’t want to alert him.

I worried Kennedy might say something. He looked as if he was about to flip out. But he went off into his medical room, and when he came back he seemed a whole lot calmer. Soon after, we both went to bed, though it took me a long time to get to sleep.

I got out of my bed at 3 a.m. and walked down the corridor to Quam’s office. Maybe I should have felt nervous, or guilty: the truth is, I was juiced. Quam had tried to kill me — I was certain it had to be him — and I wanted to nail him. Forget the radar, the Russians, the mine and all that. This was personal.