Tundra (2 page)

‘Pleasant enough,’ said Purkiss, flexing his shoulders, rolling his neck. He looked at his watch. He’d left London fourteen hours earlier, and had crossed eight time zones. During the longest stretch of the journey, that between Moscow and Yakutsk, he’d snatched four hours’ broken sleep. Disorientation and fatigue hadn’t quite set in yet, but they were lurking in the shadows.

Rest wasn’t a priority at the moment.

He said: ‘Dr Medievsky. Just want to establish this from the outset. I’ll stay out of your way as far as possible. I don’t want to disrupt the running of the station in the slightest. Not just out of consideration for you and your team, but because I want to observe as natural a working environment as I’m able. So please don’t feel you need to afford me special treatment, or lay on any out-of-the-ordinary activities for my benefit. I won’t say pretend I’m not here, because of course that’s not possible. But ... well.’

Medievsky studied Purkiss, appearing genuinely to reflect on what he’d said. Then he nodded, a faint smile creasing his cheeks.

‘Okay. Thank you, Mr Farmer.’

‘John.’

‘Oleg.’ He swept an arm down the corridor. ‘Come. Let me show you a little of the station, and introduce you to some of the team. Unless you’d prefer to set up in your room first?’

‘No, I’d like to meet them.’

The American, Montrose, followed them in silence. They trudged the length of the corridor, Medievsky tapping the metal doors as he passed them.

‘Storage.’

At the end, the corridor hooked to the left. A woman appeared round the corner just before they reached it. She was carrying a large, transparent plastic box in both arms, and slowed, staring at Purkiss. Early fifties, greying hair scraped back in a pony tail, eyes like pale searchlights in her otherwise placid face.

Dr Patricia Clement
, thought Purkiss, a moment before Medievsky said it. Medievsky added: ‘Behavioural psychologist.’

She seemed to be debating whether or not to put down the container she was lugging and shake hands. Purkiss gave a gentle shake of his head. She nodded.

‘Hello.’

Purkiss had known she was American, but in the two vowels he thought he detected a trace of the Deep South. She passed them and opened one of the storage doors behind.

Purkiss glanced down shorter corridors branching off the main one. The lighting was dim, in the interests of economy, he assumed. Voices echoed distantly through the building.

He turned to Montrose at his shoulder. ‘Dr Montrose, your specialist field is botany, is that right?’

Montrose’s eyes were suspicious behind the glasses, as if Purkiss had accused him of something. ‘Yes.’

‘Just making sure I’ve got the professions matched to the right people. Avoids embarrassment later.’

The smells of cooking began to filter down the corridor, and the human noises became louder. Medievsky pushed open a door and they stepped through into brightness and chatter.

‘Mr John Farmer,’ Medievsky announced.

It was a large, square room, a combination of dining room and lounge, with two battered oblong tables at one end near a small kitchenette and an assortment of armchairs and sofas at the other. Four people milled about, two seated, a pair standing at the kitchenette counter. The conversation stopped abruptly as all faces turned towards Purkiss. He felt as though he’d stepped through the doors of a saloon bar in a Western.

‘Hey, man,’ called one of the seated people cheerily, raising a hand. Purkiss took in the thin face and frame, the scrappy beard, the baseball cap with the legend
Cincinnati Reds
. The picture Purkiss had seen of him was more formal, but he made the match:
Efraim Avner
.

Avner stayed seated, sprawled comfortably across the sofa, but the others stood up or came over from the kitchenette and dusted down their hands and approached. Purkiss shook in turn as they introduced themselves.

‘Oleksandra Budian.’ Mid-forties, Purkiss guessed. Short, bespectacled, grave-looking, she pronounced her name as though she was imparting a vital piece of intelligence.

The big, fair-haired man was Gunnar Haglund. He was taller even than Purkiss, six-four or -five, and Purkiss had the sense that he had to make a conscious effort to temper the strength of his grip when shaking hands.

‘Engineer, yes?’ said Purkiss. Haglund nodded once.

From the sofa, Avner laughed. ‘He’s more than that. Gunnar keeps this god damn place from falling in on us every time the wind hits.’

The third person who’d risen was older than the rest, past sixty in Purkiss’s estimation. His balding crown surmounted a pouched face with greyly stubbled jowls. He moved stiffly, as though his overweight frame was demanding too much of the joints which supported it.

‘Keys.’ His handshake was fleshy and damp, his accent English.

Douglas Keys
, thought Purkiss.
The medic.
He noticed the glint of the overhead light on the sheen of the man’s brow.

At Purkiss’s shoulder the American, Montrose, said, ‘You want coffee?’

‘That would be great. Thanks.’

Montrose tipped his head toward one of the armchairs. Purkiss didn’t sit until it was clear at least some of the others were going to do the same. But a couple of them, the engineer Haglund and Keys, the doctor, stood gazing down at Purkiss as though he was some strange exhibit.

A few seconds before the silence became awkward, Purkiss said: ‘Dr Medievsky will have told you who I am, but I’ll sum up. I’m a stringer for Reuters, and I’m here to do a series of pieces on Yarkovsky Station and the work you’re conducting here. If it’s acceptable to you, I’d like to interview each one of you at some point about your specific field. I understand that I may also be allowed to accompany you on field trips, to gain first-hand experience of your work. I’m here for four weeks, so there’s no pressure – I’m sure we’ll be able to fit in a mutually convenient time.’ He glanced at Medievsky. ‘And as I’ve said to your leader, I’ll be as unobtrusive as I possibly can. If I’m getting in your way, please say so and I’ll back off.’

Purkiss had used the term
leader
deliberately. He noticed the reactions, slight but definite, from certain people in the room.

He filed his observations away for later consideration. Because he’d already learned a good deal about the men and women who made up the staff of Yarkovsky Station, far more than he’d gleaned from his reading of the potted biographies Vale had supplied him with.

‘Call you John?’ said Avner.

‘Of course.’

Beneath the peak of the baseball cap, Avner’s eyes strained with suppressed mirth. ‘One big question, John.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Why in the hell did you pick
February
to visit?’

‘Fair point.’ Purkiss spread his hands. ‘It wasn’t entirely my choice, to be honest, but I can see the sense of it. Readers interested in finding out more about a research station in Siberia are going to want to hear about what work is like in conditions of extreme cold. It’ll be a better story this way. Plus, it’ll be interesting to hear from you how the nature of the work you do varies according to the season.’

‘Have you been to Siberia before?’ This was from Oleksandra Budian, the small owlish woman. Her eyes were magnified behind her glasses like an interrogator’s, but her tone was friendly enough.

‘No. Coldest place I’ve ever visited is Calgary, in Canada.’

There was a shift in the atmosphere in the room, almost a relaxing as a silent communication passed between the men and women.
He doesn’t know what he’s in for.
Purkiss was the intruder whose arrival had threatened to disrupt the unity of the group; now he’d revealed himself as an outsider, and they were whole once more. A family of sorts.

Purkiss sipped the coffee Montrose had brought him. It was black and heavily sugared, almost aggressively so. Purkiss normally took his coffee white and unsweetened. He decided not to make an issue of it.

‘So,’ he said, as he put the mug aside. ‘I’m a novice, someone you’ll find hopelessly naive about the ways to dress and to behave in a climate like this. I’m hoping to learn from you. But I’m not here to be a pain in the backside, and if ever I’m starting to become one, I trust you’ll tell me so.’

Again he sensed an adjustment in the room: in the postures, the demeanours.

Efraim Avner clapped his hands, once. ‘Vodka.’ To Purkiss: ‘You a drinking man?’

‘I’m a journalist,’ said Purkiss.

‘Hell, yeah.’ For the first time the young man stood up. He clicked his fingers manically. ‘Come
on
, people. We’ve got a guest.’

The engineer, Haglund, ambled over to a panel of wall cupboards and turned with two rows of shot glasses clasped on his fingertips like talons. Avner himself produced a litre bottle of vodka with a flourish, setting it down on the table between the sofas and cracking the cap with relish. He poured in a continuous stream like a clumsy bartender, the clear fluid slopping between the arrayed glasses.

It was Medievsky who raised the toast. ‘Welcome to Yarkovsky Station.’

They knocked back the shots quickly, Medievsky and Montrose and Budian and Avner and Haglund. Purkiss noticed that Keys, the British doctor, hadn’t been poured a glass. 

Purkiss himself swigged the vodka, coughed behind his hand, allowed most of it to spray beneath his collar. He’d mastered the art of pretended heavy drinking over an evening while staying completely sober, but this kind of in-the-spotlight downing of shots was more difficult. Nonetheless, the liquor was raw and rough, and it was entirely plausible that as a Western European he might gag upon encountering it for the first time.

‘Whoah,’ he said. ‘The learning curve begins here.’

That earned him a laugh, a genuine and unforced guffaw from most of the people present. Only Montrose, the bespectacled American, looked away, unsmiling, touching the rim of his empty glass to his upper lip.

Purkiss looked at each of them in turn, raised his eyebrows. ‘No
na zdorovye
?’

A collective wince went up. Avner actually cringed, and glanced across in mock fearfulness at Medievsky. ‘No. Jesus. First of all, that’s not a drinking toast at all. That’s grade-school Russian, man.’

Purkiss knew that. He wanted to convey the impression that his Russian was good but not quite at the standard of a native speaker.

He said, ‘Why else? You said,
first of all
.’

Medievsky answered. ‘We do not speak Russian here at Yarkovsky Station, Mr Farmer. Not everybody here is fluent, so English is the lingua franca. It’s an iron rule, which I would be most grateful if you’d be sure to respect.’

‘No problem.’ Purkiss pretended to sip at the remainder of the liquid in his shot glass. ‘Makes life a lot easier for me.’

‘And it makes life a lot more interesting for
me
,’ said Avner. He reached over and began to refill the glasses. Purkiss put his hand over his own. ‘Studying fellow Russkies who aren’t allowed to speak their own language, even when engaging in technical scientific discourse with a compatriot. It’s enormous fun.’ He peered at Purkiss, his eyes mischievous and unclouded by the vodka. ‘I’m the anthropologist here. But you probably knew that already, John.’

‘Yes,’ said Purkiss.

‘
Skol
, then.’ Avner emptied his glass, still watching Purkiss.

Medievsky stood up. ‘John, let me show you a little of our facility. And then, of course, your room.’ He bent and muttered something to Budian, who nodded without looking at him.
A meeting, or some kind of instruction,
Purkiss thought.

Purkiss rose and followed Medievsky, conscious of the eyes at his back. He was aware also of a sense of anticipation, of imminence.

Because he hadn’t yet met the person he’d come to the station for. The target.

The door of the mess quarters swung open and as if on cue, as if the whole process had been cheesily choreographed, a man came in and stopped and stared straight at Purkiss, and Purkiss felt the electric tingle of recognition, of first contact.

Medievsky turned slightly.

‘Ah. John Farmer, the remaining member of our team. Dr Frank Wyatt.’

The man who’d come through the door was in his middle fifties. He had the lean, ascetic build of an athlete, the set mouth of a man committed to an ideal. Purkiss had studied a host of pictures of the man in innumerable files, and he knew Wyatt’s thick shock of hair had turned its current slate-grey twenty years earlier and stayed there.

The man paused for the briefest instant before stepping forward and extending his hand.

‘Farmer. You’re the journalist.’

‘Dr Wyatt.’

Even before the handshake, the symbolic clasp that offered nothing more than a meeting of skins, two realisations branded themselves on Purkiss’s mind.

Vale had been right about Wyatt.

And Wyatt knew why Purkiss was there.

S
ome of Purkiss’s most productive thinking over the years had been done on beds just like this one, in anonymous rooms, with his hands behind his head and an impersonal ceiling above him and silence all around.

But the environment, this time, was different. The quiet was almost absolute, the low hum of a distant generator so faint as to be quickly ignorable by the brain’s auditory cortex. And yet Purkiss was aware of a sense of immenseness, of a huge encroaching landscape stretching in all directions  for thousands of miles. He’d read about the region extensively; had studied Solzhenitsyn’s excoriation of the Soviet Archipelago, and the numerous travelogues by users of the Trans-Siberian train. But though he’d gained from these accounts a sense of the sweaty, claustrophobic immediacy of the Siberian experience, he was unprepared for the crushing
vastness
of the terrain, the dead and cold implacability of the millions of square miles of harsh Earth in the centre of which he was nestled.

It was the closest Purkiss imagined he would ever come to experiencing the surface of another planet.

One of the first surprises he’d encountered after entering the room was the en-suite bathroom. It was little more than a shower cubicle which one could reach only by stepping over a squat toilet, but it was more than Purkiss had been expecting. He wondered whether all the rooms were equipped in the same way, or whether he was being accorded special treatment as a guest upon whom Medievsky was keen to make a favourable impression.