Black Ice (46 page)

In a flash he had it.

The plane. The crashed plane. Fitzgerald's route would have taken him right past it. Of all the factors he had so painfully run through, De Pierman had never thought that the crashed plane might have offered salvation to the Capricorn survivors. Perhaps the transmitter had been left there?

Next, De Pierman made a rough calculation of the distance from Capricorn to the aircraft; it was about three hundred miles. That was well beyond Dr Gresham's estimate of what a survivor could achieve on foot … so how had Fitzgerald done it?

Like the rest of the world, De Pierman would have to wait for the answers.

109

Julian Fitzgerald refused all interviews to the local press at Ushuaia, knowing he would get far more attention from the international press in London.

He transferred to the first available 747 flight out of Buenos Aires, and, by the time the Aerolinas Argentinas jumbo put the wheels down at Heathrow, the airport press room was packed with news crews and reporters. CNN, Reuters, Associated Press and the BBC had all devoted crews to cover Fitzgerald's miraculous reappearance from the dead, and they'd been joined by a host of local and other news agencies.

As the frail, frost-ravaged figure of Fitzgerald was escorted into the room, there was a collective gasp from the reporters. Could this really be the renowned explorer? He looked like he'd aged a lifetime in the last six months. Cameras flashed as he held the side of the table for support.

Alexander De Pierman was also present at the conference, as was Irene Evans. They sat uneasily behind the press-briefing table and waited while Fitzgerald lowered himself painfully onto a seat.

Quickly, the volume of the shouts rose. For a while it seemed the press mêlée was going to turn into a fistfight as reporters jostled elbow to elbow in front of the explorer. Fitzgerald tried to talk but no words could be heard. Gradually, the row began to diminish.

Someone handed Fitzgerald a plastic bottle of water.

When the explorer finally managed to moisten his lips enough to speak, his words were not much more than a whisper. The press pack fell absolutely quiet as dozens of microphones were thrust towards him.

‘Mr Fitzgerald,' one of the more strident reporters managed to ask, ‘what happened at Capricorn base?'

‘The fire?' Fitzgerald said. ‘It was an electrical fault, something wrong with the wiring in the base. There was a strong wind, the flames took hold faster than we could fight them … Then the diesel tank exploded and destroyed everything.'

‘How many people survived the fire?'

Fitzgerald took another swig of the water.

‘One died immediately, my team mate Carl Norland. Others were burned and died later.'

‘What happened after the fire?'

‘We had no food and no transport. We realised there would be no rescue, and we knew we could never make it to the nearest base. So we headed for the plane which crashed on the Blackmore Glacier … we knew there was an emergency transmitter there…'

He stopped as he was hit by a violent coughing fit. The surrounding reporters let him recover before firing the next question at him.

‘How did you survive?'

Fitzgerald looked into space for a long moment before replying; when he turned his attention back to the reporter, his stare was terrible, the blood-red eyes mesmerising as they fixed on the questioner.

‘There were depots with food and equipment,' the explorer said. ‘Two of them, one hundred miles apart, heading towards the crashed plane. Dr Burgess had put them in place when she came to rescue me at the beginning of the winter, and they were still there.'

Sitting next to the explorer, De Pierman cursed himself quietly as he heard this news. So
that
was the missing factor that they hadn't built into the equation. Lauren had put down depots which could keep the team alive. Now it was all beginning to make a type of sense.

‘How did your companions die?' the reporter asked.

Fitzgerald paused once more.

‘We got them all to the first depot,' he said, ‘but there wasn't enough medical equipment to keep the injured alive. They were burned, you see, in the fire. They died of the infections … one after another … and there was nothing we could do. We buried them in the crevasses…'

Fitzgerald's face crumpled as he wept, the reporters keeping a respectful silence as he struggled to regain some composure.

‘Dr Burgess was the last,' he continued. ‘My God, she was strong. But even she didn't get much further than the second depot. Then it was just me and the fight to get to the crashed plane.'

‘Why didn't you call in the rescue right away when you got to the transmitter? What made you keep going to the coast?'

Fitzgerald took a deep breath.

‘There are two types of people in this world. There are starters. And there are finishers. I made a solemn promise some time ago that I would become the first person to cross the widest point of the Antarctic continent on foot. And I kept that promise by crossing those last eighty miles to the coast.'

There was a murmur of admiration from the gathered reporters.

‘One more thing.' Fitzgerald reached into his top pocket and brought out the titanium sample tube.

The cameramen shuffled and bumped each other as they tried to focus on the phial.

‘Most of you will know,' Fitzgerald said, ‘that Capricorn was a scientific base, but not many of you will know what its true aims were. In fact, Dr Burgess's objective was to examine a subterranean lake … a lake which she suspected would contain life which had never been encountered on earth before. The day before the fire, the team drilled into that lake and retrieved this sample. It was Dr Burgess's dying wish that this sample be delivered to her sponsor for analysis, and I honour that wish now by handing this test tube to Alexander De Pierman.'

Fitzgerald handed the sample over to De Pierman with a flourish, the oilman nodding his thanks. Then the explorer broke off the interview and was escorted, with a policeman on each arm to support him, into a waiting ambulance. De Pierman left too, brushing the reporters' questions aside and climbing into his limousine for the journey back to London.

The last hope had died; De Pierman had to be realistic: there was no hope for Lauren and the rest of her team now. Fitzgerald had seen them die with his own eyes, and you only had to take one look at the man to know that he too had been through hell and back.

De Pierman couldn't help but feel that he'd failed Lauren in some crucial way. Why hadn't he raised the alarm earlier? Why had he waited through more than two weeks of radio silence before wondering if something had gone badly wrong at Capricorn? How might this have ended if he'd been more alert?

De Pierman buzzed his secretary.

‘Jane, will you come and pick up the sample from Capricorn? I want it taken in for analysis right away.'

He held up the sample tube and shook it gently. From within he could hear the faint sound of liquid sloshing around. There'd better be something good in that tube, he mused, or Lauren had given her life for nothing.

110

Alexander De Pierman came out of a meeting at the Sheraton Park Lane and checked the LCD display on his mobile. There was one message waiting, a number he did not recognise.

‘Mr De Pierman,' the voicemail ran, ‘this is the Cowley Laboratory. I have some bad news for you regarding the specimen from Capricorn base. Can you get over here right away?'

De Pierman had himself driven to the laboratory, the manager meeting him at the door and escorting him through to the analysis room.

‘We got the equipment all sterilised,' he told De Pierman, ‘worked out the correct procedures to deal with the sample, but I'm afraid you're going to be very disappointed when I tell you what we found.'

De Pierman was perplexed.

‘There was no life in the specimen?'

The lab manager gave a brittle laugh.

‘I'm afraid we've all been the victim of an elaborate hoax. What's in that test tube will never hold life.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

The lab manager held up the test tube and pulled out the rubber bung from the neck.

‘Take a smell,' he said. ‘You'll see what I mean.'

De Pierman put his nose to the glass phial, pulling back a little at the pungent aroma that assaulted his nostrils.

‘I haven't run any tests yet,' the lab manager told him, ‘but we have a pretty good idea what it is.'

De Pierman took another sniff to make sure he was not mistaken, a bewildered expression crossing his features as he did so.

‘Oh, I know what this is all right,' he said, ‘but how did it come to be in this test tube? Has there been a mistake?'

‘No mistake,' the lab manager confirmed. ‘That is the sample Fitzgerald handed to you earlier today.'

‘But Lauren wouldn't have given him the wrong tube. How could she? That sample was everything to her … It doesn't make any sense at all.'

The lab manager shrugged. ‘We're as much in the dark as you are. Someone's idea of a joke, maybe?'

De Pierman chewed it over in his mind, his sharply analytical brain trying to make some sense out of this bizarre development.

‘Unless…' he said, ‘unless this isn't a sample at all. Maybe Lauren was trying to tell us something. Perhaps it's a signal of some sort.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't follow you.'

De Pierman checked his watch.

‘If I'm not mistaken, Mr Fitzgerald is meeting his adoring public as we speak. If I'm lucky, I can just catch him. I think he has some questions to answer.'

111

Alexander De Pierman's chauffeur-driven BMW pulled up outside the Royal Geographical Society just after eight p.m.

‘Wait here, please,' he instructed the driver.

De Pierman made his way through the plush corridors to the lecture hall, where he gently pushed open one of the side doors and found a standing place in the crowd. Fitzgerald had become front-page news all over the world, and the room was packed with hundreds of people.

The explorer stood before them as he reached the end of his address, emaciated but poker-backed, his face pockmarked with the ravages of frostbite.

‘And so to conclude.' He wiped a tear away from his eyes with his bandaged hands. ‘I would have to say that a journey to hell itself would scarcely have held more horrors. To watch Lauren Burgess and her brave team die one by one, to know that there was nothing more that I could do other than share my last few crumbs of food with them … those were moments which will live with me for ever. When I reached the crashed aircraft I managed to find the transmitter, but something inside me—call me stubborn if you like—prevented me from calling in help at that stage.'

Fitzgerald gulped, seemingly overcome. There was not a whisper in the auditorium, a dropping pin would have sounded like a scaffold pole.

‘I decided to carry on my original quest. To walk from one side of the Antarctic continent to the other … at the widest point. Seven days later I made it to the sea, where I finally set up the radio and called in the air rescue. But my greatest satisfaction was not from my own humble achievement, it was to be the bearer of a vital test tube from Capricorn base. I gave that test tube for analysis today, and I believe the results will prove the whole enterprise worthwhile.'

The hall erupted into a thunderous roar of approval, hundreds of people cheering and clapping. Cries of ‘Bravo!' were ringing out; many of the women were in tears. On the stage, Julian Fitzgerald stood modestly behind the lectern, waving occasionally with his bandaged hands to acknowledge the crowd.

After some minutes, the President of the Society took the stage, raising his palms to quell the applause.

‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,' he began. ‘It has been our pleasure over the years to witness some remarkable stories of human courage within these four walls. Extraordinary stories of triumph over adversity. But I believe we have seldom heard a story to match that of Mr Fitzgerald. Faced with one setback after another, and often with his own life in danger, he struggled to preserve the lives of his companions in one of the most hostile environments on earth. When they were lost, he struggled on, becoming the first man … the
first
man, mark you, to make a complete crossing of the Antarctic continent at its widest point.'

There was another ripple of applause around the hall.

‘And not only that,' the President continued. ‘In addition, he preserved the one precious scientific sample which had survived the catastrophic fire at Capricorn base. A sample which may, we understand, change the fabric of biology as we know it. Not since the days of Livingstone, Stanley or Scott have we been blessed with such a stirring national achievement. We salute you, Mr Fitzgerald, and may I say we will be forwarding your name to the committee to receive the Founder's Medal!'

More great cheers rang around the hall.

‘And now, if anyone has any questions, I'm sure Mr Fitzgerald will oblige.'

A hand went up at the front.

‘What can you possibly do next? After this stupendous achievement, is there anything left for an explorer such as yourself?'

Fitzgerald took the stand again. ‘There is always another challenge,' he said, ‘and that is why this is an auspicious moment to announce that I will be setting up a scientific institute called the Fitzgerald Foundation. The objectives will be to pursue challenging scientific projects in the polar regions of the planet. I will be looking for subscribers and benefactors for the foundation in the near future.'

The audience showed its appreciation again. There were calls of ‘Here, here!' from some of the older members.

Then a voice rang out from the back.

‘I have a question for you,' it said, ‘but I'm not sure you'll want to hear it.'