The Power of Five Oblivion (66 page)

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m sorry to break in. But Commander Cain very much wants to see you. Something’s happened that you should know about. He asked if you would accompany me back to command HQ.”

Command HQ. That was just another name for the big tent. Richard glanced at Matt wearily, wondering if he would want to go out in the cold again. They’d all had more than enough of Commander David Cain. But Matt was already getting to his feet, reaching for his weatherproofs that he had taken off when he came in. Scarlett did the same. Lohan shook his head, an ugly look on his face, but he wasn’t going to be left behind on his own. He muttered something in Mandarin and dragged on his jacket.

The four of them followed Greyson out of the plane and back across the ice shelf. Even now, the doctors were still working. Matt saw movement behind some of the tents and he could smell blood and antiseptic in the air. Two stretcher-bearers walked past, carrying a body covered in a sheet. He glimpsed a hand hanging down streaked with blood. From somewhere, they heard a man groaning. Outside one of the wooden shacks, a group of uniformed soldiers stood together, sucking on cigarettes, the smoke and their own misting breath indistinguishable from one another. They glanced at Matt as he went by but said nothing. They were probably waiting for orders, even if they didn’t fully trust the people who were giving them. Their eyes were haunted. None of them was speaking.

Eight officers were waiting for Matt and the others inside the tent. Cain was one of them and Matt recognized most of the others. The Russian, Shubniakov, and the Argentinian, Sabato, had both died. But some of the other military men who had attended the morning briefing were there. The British commander, Johnson, was supporting himself on a crutch. Others were bandaged. Almost nobody from the day’s assault had escaped completely unscathed. The mood in the tent was quiet and subdued. It was as if they all knew that they were responsible for what had happened but none of them wanted to blame themselves.

There was a stranger sitting in a chair, the centre of attention. He was West African, muscular, dressed in rags with a gash in the side of his head and dried blood running all the way down his cheek. He had short hair, in dreadlocks, and a tattoo of some sort of animal around his neck. He had recently been in shackles. His wrists were raw and there was more blood on his arms. He looked up quickly as Matt came in. His eyes were large and staring. Matt saw a spark of hope and yet, he thought, at the same time, fear.

“What’s happening?” Richard asked.

David Cain stepped forward. Something had gone out of him since he had made his speech that morning. There was a waxy quality to his face, a sense that he was only holding himself together, being himself, with an effort. And the men around him knew it too. They were uneasy in his presence. They probably weren’t even aware they were doing it but they were avoiding each other’s eyes.

“We took this man prisoner,” Cain said. “That is, he came back with our forces after the attack. It’s not clear how he made it across the ice before it cracked but the point is he came here deliberately, of his own free will. He says his name is Omar and he’s originally from Senegal. He was working for the Nightrise Corporation in New York and they brought him down here. He says he’s a Christian and that he has no loyalty to the Old Ones. He fought with them because he had no choice but he took the first opportunity he could to desert. According to Omar, a lot of the people in the fortress wanted to do the same but they’re too afraid.”

“What does he want?” Matt asked.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“I bring you a message,” Omar said. “It comes from a friend of yours. He told me to find you. His name is Scott.”

“Scott!” Scarlett muttered the single word.

“That’s right.” The commander was holding a scrap of paper. He turned it in his hands as if unwilling to part with it. “Scott wants to meet with you. At least, that’s what he says.”

He handed the note to Matt, who unfolded it. There was a brief message, handwritten presumably by Scott, although Matt had never seen his writing before. He read it out loud:

“Matt – I hope this reaches you. I’ve made a bad mistake. I know that now. But if it’s not too late, if you’ll trust me, we can beat the Old Ones. I’ve learnt things about this place and I know its weaknesses. Will you at least meet with me and let me explain? There’s a place called Skua Bay, about a kilometre down the coast. be there alone at midnight tonight. Come alone … just you and me. We can work this out, I promise you, and we can win. Whatever you may think, I’m still one of the Five. Scott.”

Matt lowered the page.

“It’s a trap,” Richard said. His voice was heavy.

“I agree,” Scarlett said. “Why would Scott want to meet with you now? If he really wanted to talk to you, he could have come to the dreamworld. Or he could have escaped himself. He didn’t need to send a note.”

“We’ve interrogated the prisoner,” Cain muttered. “There may be a little more he can add.”

“I spoke to Scott!” Omar had a high-pitched, nervous voice. “He is very scared. The Old Ones watch him all the time. This place that he speaks of, Skua Bay, it is safe. It is near to your ships, away from the fort. He will be alone. You will be alone. You will see that. Scott is your friend. He wants to help you.”

There was a brief silence. Then Lohan stepped forward. “Give me five minutes alone with this man,” he said. “Give me fire and give me a knife. I will tell you very quickly if he is lying to us. But let me say right now that I do not believe a word of this. They want Matt. That is all they want. And this is their way to draw him in.”

“We’re not going to torture him,” Matt said. He was still holding the note, weighing it in his hand. He approached Omar. “You saw Scott?”

“Yes.”

“Describe him to me.”

“He is thin with dark hair. Pale skin. Brown eyes. He told me to say something when we met, so that you would know it was really him.”

“And what was that?”

“He said that he was sorry about Professor Chambers. He made a mistake and he knows you were angry with him.”

Both Matt and Richard knew what Omar was talking about. Scott had blamed himself for the death of the professor at her home in Nazca. Nobody else in the fortress could have known about that. At the very least it proved that the message really must have come from Scott.

But then Richard put into words what both of them were thinking. “It could still be a trap,” he said. “If Scott’s working with the Old Ones, they could be using him to get at you.”

Matt glanced at Greyson, the man who had collected him. “Do you know Skua Bay?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s where he says. About a kilometre to the west.”

“Could you drop me there?”

“Sure. We could take you down there on a Zodiac.”

“Wait a minute!” Richard cut in. “You’re not seriously thinking of taking Scott up on his little invitation, are you? That’s crazy! Think about it for just one minute. What Scarlett said is right. If Scott really wanted to, he could just walk out of the fortress and see you. He could use his powers. Can’t he control people’s minds? He could get one of the shape-changers to give him a lift! Or the dreamworld! Scott was turning bad even when we were in Peru. I’m sorry to say it, but it’s true. You can’t trust him, Matt. The Old Ones are looking for you. This is a trick.”

Matt turned to Cain. “What do you think, Commander?”

Cain shrugged. “I don’t know, Matthew,” he said. “I suppose I tend to agree with Mr Cole. The whole thing seems more than a little suspicious. But at the same time, I will add this.” He paused. “We’ve been beaten. I suppose I need to shoulder most of the blame but today was a disaster. We have only half the men we started out with. Our aerial forces have been shown to be useless. Right now I would say that the future of the world hangs by a thread.

“So what does that mean? It means that if there’s even a whisker of a chance that this man is telling the truth and that Scott can help us, we don’t have any choice but to go for it. God knows, I realize I’ve lost the right to advise you. But that’s what I think.”

Matt nodded. “I agree.”

Richard went over to him. “Don’t do it, Matt,” he pleaded.

“There is no other way,” Matt said. “You know that, Richard. The Five have to come together. If we’re separated, we have no choice at all.”

“But you’re nowhere near each other,” Richard said. “You and Scarlett are here. Pedro is in Italy. Jamie is in England. And the doors are closed. You’re not going to come together any time soon.” He took a breath, then continued more slowly. “We’ve lost, Matt. The attack today was a monumental gamble and it didn’t pay off. The best thing right now would be to get out of this hellish place as soon as we can. Regroup somewhere else. Live to fight another day.”

Everyone turned to Matt, waiting for him to answer.

“You’re right, Richard,” he admitted. There was a tiredness in his voice that Richard had never heard before. “Everything has gone wrong. But that’s why I’ve got to do this. If we run away and hide, what then? We’re on a dying planet. The Old Ones have ruined everything.” He glanced one last time at the letter. “Right now, this is the only hope we have left. Scott may be lying, in which case it’s all over. They’ve won. But you know him. Do you really think he would deliver me to them? Isn’t there just a tiny chance that he has changed his mind and wants to help? I don’t think we can ignore him. I think I have to hear what he has to say.”

“No,” Scarlett said. There were tears in her eyes. “You can’t go, Matt. What if he’s lying? What if they manage to capture you?”

“Fight another day,” Lohan said. “Do not go to this place. Do not put yourself in the lion’s den.”

Cain was the only person in the tent who seemed to think differently. “We can give you full support,” he said. “You can stay in radio contact the whole time and I can have a rapid response team standing by in skimmers.”

“I think it’s worth a chance,” Matt said. He had decided. “I’m going.”

Scarlett groaned and Lohan looked away but Matt ignored them. Cain walked over to the table and pulled out a map showing the coastline around Oblivion. The man called Omar sat in his chair, his expression blank.

“Wait a minute,” Richard said. He turned to Matt. “I don’t understand why you’re making this decision but I’m not going to let you go there alone. If you’re heading off to this Skua Bay or whatever it’s called, I’m coming with you.”

“Richard…”

“No. There’s no argument. I started this adventure with you and I’m going to finish it with you, however it turns out.”

“Scott wanted me to come alone.”

“Scott knows me. If he sees me with you, he’s not going to be surprised. But just for once I’m putting my foot down, Matt. Either you let me come with you or you don’t go at all.”

“Then we’ll go together,” Matt said, and at that moment Richard got the impression that he had known it would happen this way all along and that he had actually been waiting for him to make his stand. He already knew that Matt had changed. But right then he felt as if the two of them were complete strangers. It was as if everything they had been through together had somehow been left behind.

“I’m going to assign Lieutenant Greyson to ferry you to the beach,” Cain said. “If you want to be there by midnight, you should leave now. It’s going to take a while to get down the cliff and onto the Zodiac.”

Matt nodded. Richard was standing next to him, silent and pale. Scarlett looked shocked.

“OK,” Matt said. “Let’s go.”

FIFTY-ONE

The Zodiac was a high-performance Rigid Inflatable Boat, or RIB, made of black rubber with a powerful 110 horsepower engine. It was waiting for Matt and Richard as they climbed down to the beach, following the intricate network of paths and staircases that had been cut into the side of the ice cliff. A handful of marines were waiting for them at the bottom. The beach was a thin strip of black shingle carried there by the movement of the glacier. The water was calm tonight, the waves lapping tamely at their feet.

They climbed in and set off, Matt sitting at the front, Richard in the middle, Lieutenant Greyson standing at the back. It was a quarter to twelve but the sun was still out behind the cloud, hovering somewhere over the horizon, and the surface of the water was more steel-like than ever. As Richard looked up towards the ice field of Oblivion, it occurred to him, almost for the first time, that he was in one of the most extraordinary places on earth: Antarctica. Travellers – explorers – had been drawn here for hundreds of years, losing themselves in the endless reaches of this vast, unspoilt wilderness. Even the light was like nothing he had seen before. And yet he looked on it with dread. He hated being here and would rather have been anywhere else.

They motored gently between two icebergs; huge, irregular blocks drifting silently, without purpose. In the distance, Richard could see the frigate, lying at anchor, surrounded by a ragtag collection of vessels that seemed to cling together as if afraid of the water around them. It was intensely cold. Although there was no wind, he could feel the chill cutting into him, reaching to his very bones. Apart from the splutter of the engine, everything was silent. He looked for any sign of wildlife – even a single bird – but nothing appeared.

“There it is,” Greyson muttered. “Straight ahead of us now…”

The young lieutenant was pointing at a small cove, an indentation on the edge of the water with solid black rock behind. The cliff face loomed high above them and Richard guessed that it was in some way connected to the mountains that surrounded the Old Ones’ fortress at the far end of Oblivion. As the Zodiac headed towards land, he looked out for Scott but there was no sign of him. It occurred to him that Scott might have been telling the truth all along. He could have been captured as he tried to leave the fortress. In a way that would be for the best. They could turn round and leave.

He looked back. There was no sign of the back-up that Cain had promised either, but Richard was confident that there were men with binoculars watching them as they made their progress towards the shore. Cain had said it would take just two minutes for the skimmers to reach the cove if they needed help.