Shockwave, p.17
Shockwave, page 17
I bristled at this and said nothing back. Armfield noticed. He did his eye-narrowing thing again. But he didn’t say anything – either to me or Macmillan – just steered us past him to a guy seated at one of the monitors, who he introduce as ‘Popov the pilot’. This sounded like something you’d hear in a book for young kids, but he was serious: the man’s name was Popov and he was the ROV’s pilot. Controlling it was referred to as ‘flying’ it, and it seemed to be a skilled job requiring weapons-grade concentration. Popov didn’t look up from what he was doing the entire time we were there.
Armfield, who seemed pretty knowledgeable, explained the basics. At 90 metres this was a relatively shallow flight for the ROV – it could operate at twenty times that depth. The pilot’s task was to avoid the boat first and the seabed second, while guiding the ROV around its planned route. Although the submersible had lights to illuminate its surroundings, it was still pretty murky down there and how the guy knew where he was supposed to fly the thing remained a mystery to me. Armfield explained that, as well as taking film and still images of the seabed, the ROV was imaging it sonically. It would also retrieve a sample – of what, I’ve no idea – to be analysed in the Polar Flow’s laboratory.
The fact was, all of this seemed perfectly legitimate to me. Armfield was genuinely enthusiastic about what was going on, and keen to share it with us. If I hadn’t known otherwise, I’d have said it looked like a research team inspecting the ocean bed for a site for a floating wind farm. And perhaps it was.
But there was something else much more sinister going on, and we only had thirty-eight hours to find out what it was and put a stop to it.
48.
We stayed in the operations room until the submersible began its ascent back up to the boat. Xander filmed Popov the pilot and the flickering pictures displayed on his screens, footage of footage in a way, and Amelia quizzed Armfield on what we were watching, but I zoned out a bit, convinced that the real story was happening elsewhere. Once the ROV had left the seabed, I told the others I wanted to watch them hoist it back on board and said I’d meet them in the mess for breakfast afterwards. When Amelia made a move to follow me, Xander put a hand on her arm. He understood I was asking for a moment alone.
I did go and watch the crew haul the submersible up out of the shifting sea. Water poured from it, silvery yellow: the sun was by now properly above the horizon. The guy who’d operated the crane before unspooled enough cable to set the machine gently down again. Once it was safely planted on the deck, he created some slack, making it easier to unhitch the clasp and stow the submersible below decks.
Macmillan watched all this too, standing next to Timo at the rail above me. At least, he stood at the rail where he could see what was going on; he and Timo actually appeared more interested in their own conversation. They seemed to be disagreeing about something. Timo’s palms were upturned and Macmillan was shaking his head, looking disappointed.
I headed up the narrow flight of stairs to their deck, but didn’t emerge onto it in full view. Instead, I paused on the upper step, my head below the bulwark. I was closer to the pair here, but not close enough to hear what they were saying. If they had come my way, I’d have walked straight past them, minding my own business, but eventually they headed off in the other direction, towards the steps that mirrored mine on the other side of the deck.
Moving quickly, I followed. I saw them turn left at the bottom of the stairs and, having crept down after them, I tailed them through the boat. Instinct told me where they were headed: the little room in the bow, through the door with the combination lock. And sure enough, that’s where they went, me following at a safe distance, ready to pretend I was there by complete coincidence if necessary.
When they entered the final corridor, I waited for twenty seconds before sticking my head round the corner, just in time to see the door close behind them. Immediately I padded the length of the corridor, right up to the door, and put my ear to it, hoping to make out what they were saying on the other side.
The ever-present throbbing of the Rolls-Royce engines ran through the boat, but since the engine room was to the stern and I was low in the bow, it was a gentle noise here. Nevertheless, it blotted out much of what I would otherwise have been able to overhear. I could only piece together occasional words and phrases that were loud enough to poke through the background rumbling. Timo’s voice, harsher than Macmillan’s Californian drawl, was the more audible. The first thing I heard him say was ‘right under his nose’.
I couldn’t catch Macmillan’s response.
‘And if they do salvage the wreckage, he’ll be in it to take the blame,’ Timo said next.
The first bit of Macmillan’s reply was inaudible, but it ended with ‘just not cottoned on’.
The two exchanged further words, but a jangling noise overhead – somebody moving something on an upper deck – muffled whatever it was.
I heard Macmillan’s voice next. ‘The timing’s still super-critical.’
Timo’s reply ended with, ‘And don’t worry, the copter pilot knows to get us out of here pronto.’
Macmillan said something about ‘not underestimating’ in response. Then he laughed. ‘Everyone’s a winner.’
‘The weather is still a factor,’ Timo said.
Macmillan: ‘No worries there, set fair.’
Timo’s reply was a mumble ending with the words ‘collateral damage’.
‘Publicity’ was all I caught from Macmillan.
Timo, crisply: ‘The share spike after we do the deal will be magnificent!’
Macmillan: ‘Yeah, you’re welcome.’
Timo chuckled and said, ‘Give me a hand here.’
Then I heard nothing for long seconds.
‘That’ll do,’ was the next thing Macmillan said.
‘Yes, that will hold,’ Timo replied.
‘Kinda ironic,’ said Macmillan. With my eyes shut, I could see him smirking. ‘When you think about it.’
‘As long as it works,’ said Timo.
‘It’ll work,’ said Macmillan, more assertively. ‘Don’t you worry about that.’
There was something conclusive about his words. I took a step back. Did I hear footsteps on the other side of the door, or was that my imagination? It didn’t matter. I spun around and jogged to the stairs at the end of the corridor. If they’d opened the door and seen me hotfooting away, that would have been bad, but I counted on getting out of sight before they emerged. It turned out, I made the right choice.
49.
I kept on back to our cabin, running through the snippets of conversation I’d overheard to cement them in my mind. Amelia and Xander were already there.
‘Where’d you get to?’ Amelia asked.
I explained.
‘And what did you hear again, precisely?’ she asked, pulling out her phone.
As I recounted what Macmillan and Timo had said, she keyed in the phrases one-handed, looking as much at me as at the screen. When I finished with ‘Don’t you worry about that’ she inspected her transcript, a look of intense concentration – which in her case includes the hint of a smile – on her face. Gaps and all, the transcript was a code she could now puzzle over.
‘Sounds like they have some sort of plan to rig the deal,’ Xander said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The bit about the share spike. I’ll bet the whole shockwave disruption event thing is designed to shift the share value.’
I’m no expert on stocks and shares, and I must have looked a bit blank. Xander went on. ‘If they do something to bring a share’s value down or pump it up just before or after they buy or sell, they can make a load of extra cash on the deal.’
This made sense, but weirdly it also made the shockwave event seem less interesting. If it was just about tweaking the value of shares in a company, so what?
‘I concur, Xander,’ said Amelia, still intent on her phone. ‘But from what you overheard, I’d say there’s a fair amount of uncertainty in play. In just under one hundred and ten words I count twelve, possibly thirteen, instances of doubt or hubris.’
‘Hubris?’
‘Originally, defiance of the gods. Now, ignoring a likely outcome by sticking one’s head in the sand, plus protesting too much. I mean, they sound like they’re trying to convince themselves their plan will work without necessarily believing it. Phrases like “No worries there”, “Yes, that will hold”, “Don’t you worry about that” and “Everyone’s a winner”. Get it?’
‘I see what you mean when you read those phrases back out of context,’ I said. ‘But trust me, the whole conversation sounded pretty confident to me.’
Amelia looked at me sceptically.
‘I found one piece of online information to support my share price theory last night,’ Xander said, tapping at his laptop. ‘Look, this is in the public domain. It’s an “in brief” piece from a site called Energy Central News, and it reports that a deal between GreenSword Investments and Valkoinen Karhu Energia Consortium, taking a stake in the Nordic next-generation power project, is – “with a favourable wind”, how cheesy is that? – set to complete this week. Pretty vague, I know. But what stood out to me was the bit that says that the “portfolio investment” is made up mostly of “wind and nuclear infrastructure, but also potentially liquid natural gas”.’
‘I wonder how much is riding on that “potentially”,’ Amelia said.
‘When was that piece published?’ I asked.
Xander checked. ‘Three days ago.’
‘And what day is it today?’ I asked.
‘Thursday,’ said Amelia. ‘7th April.’
‘So, tomorrow is Friday.’
‘That’s the way it generally works,’ said Xander.
‘And Friday is generally the end of the working week,’ I said.
‘Not necessarily, with deals like this. But possibly,’ said Xander.
‘Where are we now?’ I asked. ‘In relation to the lines on Armfield’s nautical chart?’
Amelia had her phone to hand. She cross-referenced the photos she’d taken of Armfield’s annotated chart with the location beacon in Maps. ‘Further north. Here-ish. Just past Bear Island.’
Looking at the dot of the island surrounded by sea, I had the sudden urge to clear my head in the fresh air. ‘Either of you want to take a look on deck with me?’ I asked, pulling on a fleece, my snow coat, a hat and mittens. Both did, and made similar preparations against the cold.
Since raising the submersible the Polar Flow had tracked northward, and the sea through which it was moving had changed: the great grey undulating slab of coldness was now pricked with gobbets of ice. Not icebergs, as such; these were smaller chunks that had broken from the sea ice and drifted south. They gave way easily enough before the boat’s blunt prow, brushed aside with the bow as the Polar Flow nosed forward.
‘The sea ice rarely makes it south of here these days,’ Amelia informed us. ‘If it does, about now, April, the end of winter, is the likeliest time for it to happen. And chunks of ice can still, statistically speaking at least, head right down into the oil fields. Rigs to the south look out for rogue icebergs and they’re built so that they can be untethered and towed out of the way to avoid a collision. See how this stuff is moving with the swell though? It’s drift ice, floating on top of the water, and it presents no problem. Real icebergs sit low and heavy in the water: the vast bulk of their mass is below the surface.’
Far off to our south-west a slab of land rose abruptly from the ice-strewn sea. Treeless, snow-scraped and sheer-sided, it was a pretty inhospitable-looking place, yet I was still pleased to be within sight of land again.
Spray rose from the foot of the cliffs: though the sea was calm offshore, waves battered the shore. With the land to give the sea a sense of scale, it was mesmerising to stand on the forward observation deck and watch the Polar Flow muscle on through the increasingly icy sea. Within half an hour we’d made our way into a bigger expanse of drift ice. Here the boat had to cut a path through a more or less unbroken sheet of the stuff. It wasn’t thick, and the boat didn’t even appear to slow down, making our progress all the more amazing to watch. Cracks shot out from the ice sheet, chunks broke off it, and we cut through the black water beneath it as easily as a bike tyre crunches through thinly crusted snow.
When I pointed this out, Amelia said, ‘Yeah, this is the marginal ice zone. Get into the heavier pack ice further north and it wouldn’t be the same.’
The three of us stood in silence for a while. Dots – birds – rose from the cliffs of distant Bear Island. They swept across the face of the rock and disappeared. Meanwhile, the Polar Flow rumbled on.
I became aware of a presence behind us. I knew who it was before I turned around: Macmillan. He smiled at me. ‘Epic view, eh?’ he drawled.
There being no alternative, I nodded.
‘Kind of humbling,’ he went on. ‘Puts everything in perspective.’
‘What do you mean, “everything”?’ asked Amelia. The question was genuine, but it came out a little sarcastic.
Macmillan, marvelling at her, said, ‘Huh.’
Xander said, ‘I agree, it’s epic.’
‘Well, enjoy it while it lasts,’ said Macmillan, making the view instantly less enjoyable for me. Did he mean we should enjoy the landscape while we were here, in it, or was he referring to the fact that the sea ice around us was under threat, all the way to the Pole? His glib tone didn’t help. It turned out he was referring to our route, as he went on to say, ‘We’ll be headed back south again soon.’
‘Why did we come up here in the first place?’ Amelia asked.
Macmillan put his fur-cuffed mittens on his hips and winked at her. ‘Why do you think?’
‘Research purposes, I assume,’ she said. ‘But specifically?’
Macmillan chuckled. ‘Wrong answer. We’re here for you.’
‘How so?’ asked Xander.
Shrugging, Macmillan said, ‘I thought you’d need some footage of the actual sea ice. The stuff that’s under threat. For the film?’
Xander had brought the drone up on deck with him, but none of us had thought to deploy it yet. I felt guilty at the oversight, or wrong-footed by it at least.
Macmillan bounced on the balls of his feet. ‘I mean, obviously I’d rig up that sad polar bear I mentioned to complete the scene if I could, but there’s a limit …’
My mittens balled into fists at my sides at this and I muttered, ‘Shockwave’ under my breath. I don’t know why; it just slipped out.
Macmillan didn’t hear. Or at least, he didn’t appear to hear. But Xander, standing next to me, definitely did. ‘No, we appreciate it,’ he said quickly, brandishing the drone. ‘I was just about to put this thing up. The light’s great.’
‘Now’s the time,’ Macmillan agreed, and took a step away. Something stopped him from leaving entirely though. He turned back to Xander. ‘You must have a fair bit of footage by now. Where’s it all stored?’
‘On my laptop,’ said Xander.
Macmillan winced. ‘Oof,’ he said. ‘Bit sketchy to have all your eggs in one basket at this stage, don’t you think?’
Was he goading us about the missing footage? I bit my tongue. Now wasn’t the time to make the accusation.
He went on smoothly, ‘Tell you what, once you’ve got what you need out here’ – he waved at the horizon – ‘edit down the highlights, just roughly …’
‘We’ve already started doing that,’ Amelia cut in. ‘Obviously.’
‘Great, great.’ Macmillan took off one glove, rammed his hand inside his jacket, and magicked up a business card. ‘Well, once you’ve added the latest stuff to it, mail a rough cut of everything so far to this address, all right?’ He paused, then added, ‘Would you be able to do that by lunchtime tomorrow, say?’
Although this was phrased as a question, it was clearly an order. But just in case we hadn’t understood, he added, ‘We’re paying for it, after all, in a way.’
‘Of course,’ Xander said.
Macmillan had pulled on his mitten again. ‘Great, great,’ he said again, and offered up his fist for Xander to bump his against. Compared to Xander’s, Macmillan’s mitten was enormous, a cushioned mass as big as a boxing glove. ‘Good luck with it,’ he said softly, with the air of a man who’d got what he’d come for. ‘Good luck with it.’
50.
We launched the drone, flew it high up above the Polar Flow, and filmed the ship’s progress through the ice. Xander was right; the cloud had broken up and the sun was less diffuse, more directional, spearing the incredible landscape with shafts of white light. As he dropped the drone closer to the boat, its shadow was clearly visible moving across the shattered ice in our wake. We’d rounded the island and were heading south again now.
I took all this in but my mind was elsewhere, racing. Xander’s online research, the contents of Armfield’s folder, the snippets of conversation I’d overheard between Timo and Macmillan – they all suggested they were plotting something bad. The ‘deal’ with the consortium wasn’t what it appeared. At the very least, it involved fossil fuels as well as renewables. But they were also rigging it somehow. And we were being used to help cover up what was going on.
Armfield had seen an opportunity: fund a kids’ eco-film and make GreenSword look good while they were doing the opposite. He’d organised an incredible trek – sure, it had gone wrong, but we still had some great footage – and neatly parked us out of the way while we were on it. Next, he’d brought us in close, close enough to keep tabs on us while Macmillan and Timo closed the actual deal. I felt used, manipulated, betrayed. And I had to do something about it.
But what?
At the very least, we had to raise the alarm. The trouble was, our information was so incomplete. A few blueprints of something that could be an electromagnetic pulse device or a directed-energy weapon, plus vague details of a deal already in the public domain. We didn’t have a ‘target’. All our footage – of the threatened landscape and the work research vessels like the Polar Flow were doing to scope out sites for wind farms – appeared totally legitimate. The only extra detail we knew, or we thought we knew, at least, was the suggested deadline: midnight on Friday 8th April. A day and a half away.
