Revelation

2 Flesland Alpha

Death and destruction entered Findhorn's Aberdeen office in the form of a small, bespectacled, mild-mannered Norwegian with an over-long trenchcoat and a briefcase. He claimed that his name was Olaf Petersen, and the briefcase was stamped with the letters O.F.P. in faded gold.

Anne put her head round the door. She was being a redhead today. 'Fred, there's a Mister Olaf Petersen here.'

The red leather armchair had been purchased for a knock-down price at a fire-damage sale but it was all brass studs and wrinkles and it gave the little office a much-needed air of opulence. Petersen sank into it and handed over a little card. He looked around at the photographs which covered the office walls: icebergs, aurora borealis, a cuddly little polar bear, an icebreaker apparently stranded on a snowfield.

The card read:

'Coffee?' Findhorn asked, but he sensed that the man had little inclination for social preliminaries.

'Thank you, but I have very little time. The Company would appreciate some help, Doctor Findhorn.' Like many Scandinavians, the man's English was excellent, only the lack of any regional accent revealing that it was a second language.

'Norsk and I have done business from time to time.'

'This particular task is quite different from anything you have done for us before now. Something has turned up. The matter is urgent and requires the strictest confidentiality. We hope that you can help us in spite of the very short notice.'

Findhorn thought of the empty diary pages yawning over the coming months. Petersen was looking at him closely. 'I had hoped to take a few days' break over Christmas.'

Petersen looked disappointed. 'Frankly, I'm disappointed. You were perfect for this assignment.'

Findhorn thought it better not to overdo the hard-to-get routine. He said, 'Why don't you tell me about it?'

Petersen, smiling slightly, pulled a large white envelope from his briefcase. 'Do you have a light table?'

'Of course. Through here.'

By labelling the door 'Weather Room', Findhorn hoped to imply that further along the corridor there were other rooms with labels like 'Mud Analysis' or 'Core Sample Laboratory' or even 'Arctic Environment Simulation Facility. Do Not Enter', rather than two broom cupboards and a toilet. The light table, about five feet by four, took up much of the room. They picked their way over cardboard boxes and piles of paper. Findhorn switched on the table and pulled the black curtain over the window. Petersen opened the envelope and pulled out a transparency about a foot square. Lettering in the corner said that it had been supplied courtesy of the National Ice Center and a DMSP infrared satellite.

Findhorn laid the transparency on the table. Down the left, the west coast of Greenland showed as a grey-white, serrated patch except where sea fog obscured the outline. Someone had outlined the limit of the pack ice with a dotted line. There was a scattering of icebergs. Little arrows pointed to them, with numbers attached.

'Do you see anything odd?' Petersen asked.

Findhorn scanned the picture. 'Not really.' He pointed to an iceberg off the Davy Sound, just on the boundary between Greenlandic and international waters. 'Except maybe A-02 here. It's pretty big.'

'Unusually so, for the east coast. The big tabular bergs are usually found on the west of Greenland. They break off from the Petterman or the Quarayaq or the Jungersen glaciers, and drift down through Baffin Bay to the Newfoundland Bank.'

'So where is this one headed?'

'It's been caught up in the East Greenland Current. It may round Cape Farewell and join its western cousins or it may break out into the North Atlantic. But size and drift aren't the issue, Doctor Findhorn. Take a closer look.'

There was a little dust on the transparency, overlying the big iceberg, and Findhorn puffed at it. The dust didn't blow away. He brushed it lightly with his finger but again it stayed put. He frowned.

'Try the microscope,' Petersen suggested politely.

Findhorn swivelled the microscope over the big transparency. He fiddled with the knurled knob, brought the photograph into focus.

The iceberg filled the field of view. A pattern of ripples marked its line of drift through the surrounding ocean. It was surrounded by a flotilla of lesser floes, like an aircraft carrier surrounded by yachts.

Findhorn swivelled the front lens holder. He frowned some more, puzzled.

The specks of dust had resolved themselves into rectangles, man-made structures like huts. Other, smaller shapes were scattered around.

He turned the microscope to its highest setting and increased the intensity of the light shining up through the translucent glass. And then he looked up from the microscope, astonished. 'But this is crazy.'

Olaf agreed. 'Icebergs melt. Split. Capsize. No sane individual sets foot on an iceberg.'

'But…'

'But a large camp has been set up on this one.' Olaf, leaning over the light table, tapped the photograph with a stubby finger. 'Yes, Doctor Findhorn, this is crazy. These small irregular shapes you see. They're men. On an iceberg which could overturn at any time.'

Findhorn stood up from the microscope. The light from the table, thrown upwards, gave Petersen a slightly sinister look, like a mad scientist in an old horror movie. A vague feeling of uneasiness was coming over him. 'What exactly does Norsk want from me?'

Petersen gave a good imitation of a smile. 'First, we'd like you to fly out to the northernmost rig in our Field Centre.'

'Norsk Flesland?'

'The same. Then, from there, we'd like to fly you out to the Norsk Explorer, our icebreaker, which is currently about three hundred kilometres north of the rig, just on the limit of the helicopter's range. The Explorer will take you to A-02, which is further north again. We want you to climb that berg.'

And now it was happening again, the old, lurching sensation in the stomach. 'Why? And why me in particular?'

Petersen was still smiling, but he had calculating eyes. 'Perhaps I will have that coffee after all.'

'How you gooin ar keed?'

'Okay thanks. Just a bit nervous.'

'Yow never bin on a reeg before?' The man's voice was raised, to penetrate Findhorn's ear protectors.

Findhorn looked out at the dark sea. In the distance, lights were blazing on the horizon. The helicopter was heading directly for them.

'Nope.'

'Thought so. What's yow job?'

'I'm just visiting.'

'You joost veezeeteeng?'

Findhorn nodded. The blaze of lights was beginning to take shape. As the helicopter approached he began to make out three illuminated giants wading in the ocean, holding hands.

The Brummie was still probing. 'Not that it's any of my business, of course, yow know what I mean?'

Now Findhorn could see that their upper structures were forested with cranes and big metal Christmas trees. There were pipes and strange projections and tiny men on walkways and platforms. The arms joining the giants resolved themselves into connecting passageways. It was a city on stilts. Its lowest deck was thirty metres clear of the Arctic Ocean: the engineers had planned for a once-in-a-century giant wave. As to the icebergs, however, they relied on statistics and prayer. Against a ten-million-ton berg, Norsk Flesland might as well be made of match-sticks.

'I'm impressed,' Findhorn said.

'Ooh ar, you will be. Yow looking at something taller than the Eiffel Tower. With ten decks and three turbines geeveeng us twenty-five megawatts. We get 'alf a million barrels of crude and three hundred million cubic feet of gas every day. There's 'alf a mile of water between the reeg and the seabed and the well penetrates fifteen thousand feet of mood.'

He's close, Findhorn thought. It's pushing six hundred thousand barrels a day, and they reach it through eighteen thousand feet of Upper Jurassic sandstone.

'But you know,' the man confided, 'for all its size, there's something keeps me listening in the dark, know what I mean?'

'A big berg?'

The man shook his head. 'A meecroscopic crack. Fatigue in a leg.'

'Which one is Alpha?'

The man leaned over Findhorn and pointed a nicotine-stained finger. 'The platform in the middle, that's Flesland Alpha, the living quarters. Beta on the left is drilling and wellhead, and Delta on the right is the gas process platform. We do twelve hours on, twelve off. They like to keep the accommodation separate. There's about fifty metres of corridor joining them.'

'What's it like, working on a rig?'

'Norwegian reegs are breell. Now on Flesland Alpha, yow've got everytheeng you want, from a ceenema to a sauwna. There's a gymnasium, snooker, leather armchairs, escalators between decks, en-suite rooms, fantastic groob. It's like the Hilton. Only the American Gulf rigs can match them, and they have the weather for barbecues. Now the Breetish exploration rigs, they're roobish. Four men to a room, recreation a grotty TV room, canteen groob worse than a motorway stop.'

'I take it you're a Brummie?' Findhorn asked.

The man bristled. 'Naeiouw. I coom from the Black Country, from Doodley, can't yow tell? There's a beeg zoo there.'

'What's your job?' Findhorn asked. The helicopter was beginning to tilt. A long pier jutted out from Delta, and at the end of it a flame fluttered in the wind, throwing a thin orange light on the dark ocean below. Findhorn glimpsed derricks, and brilliantly lit walkways, and a confusing mass of pipes, and then the helicopter was sinking down towards an octagonal helideck, the wind from the rotors rippling water on its surface.

'Oi look after the peegs, ar keed.'

Findhorn decided against asking for a translation.

A muffled voice came over the intercom. 'There's a very high wind out there. Keep a firm hold of your baggage and watch your footing. Keep your ear protectors on.'

On deck, the wind threatened to knock Findhorn off his feet. It was cold and wet with sea spray. There was a smell of oil. Men on the helideck pointed toward a stairwell. Findhorn followed the oil men, in their orange survival suits and carrying holdalls, down metal stairs and along a short corridor. Here the air was warm. There was a queue at a desk marked Resepsjon; there were lifejackets to hand in, and hard hats and steel-toed boots to collect; there were ID cards to exchange for cabin and muster cards.

For Findhorn, however, the rules were being broken. The platform manager, steel grey hair poking under her helmet, was waiting. Without a word she took him by the arm and led him past the queue. There was to be no trace of Findhorn's visit to Flesland Alpha.

It was so huge that, at first, Findhorn thought he must have imagined it. Eyes straining and nerves taut, it was too easy to see non-existent structures in the whirling grey patterns of the blizzard. But then the helmsman was shouting 'Iceberg dead ahead,' and suddenly it was real, and Findhorn found himself saying, 'Oh my God.'

As it approached, the white turrets and battlements of the Disneyland castle resolved themselves into crevasses and overhanging cliffs and old meltwater tunnels as wide as motorways.

Through the big panoramic window of the bridge, wipers clicking, Findhorn and Hansen watched the ship's forecastle plunging down troughs, with black water and foam and chunks of ice swirling along the deck before smashing against the bridge and pouring over the sides. A foot of solid ice covered davits, ventilation shafts and deck railings.

Even as he watched, visibility was deteriorating. The Captain, clinging on to the engine-room telegraph, had acquired a dour, taciturn expression. His eyes, Findhorn noticed, kept straying to the ship's inclinometer. Every few seconds the clang of little bergs ran through the ship's hull.

Findhorn looked in vain for a route up the grim, lifeless structure; the cliffs were pockmarked and yet smooth; old shorelines were marked out along its length by sloping ridges. Waves bigger than houses were pounding the foot of the berg. He said again, 'Oh my God.'

'Aye,' Hansen agreed, gripping the telegraph. 'Rather you than me.'

'Ice two fifty metres,' the schoolboy called out. His face was almost buried in the cowling of the radar. His accent had just a trace of Norwegian and he had a cool, nonchalant attitude. The giveaway was the slight tremor in his voice; that, and the grip of his hands on the edge of his desk.

'Are you sure it's the right one?'

Hansen grinned sadistically. 'This is the age of GPS, Mister. But there's one way to make sure.' A blast of sound actually shook Findhorn like a jelly. His heart jumped, and the sound of the ship's horn echoed off a hundred unseen bergs. They waited.

'Would you look at that?' Hansen exclaimed.

A tiny shape was moving at the top of the iceberg. It resolved itself into a man dressed in thick white furs. The man started to wave furiously.

'Is that Watson or Roscoe?' Hansen asked.

'Too far away to say,' Findhorn replied.

To his utter horror, he realised that the berg was swaying. The ice cliff facing them was slowly tilting over. He watched aghast as it just kept on tilting towards them. The man should have fallen off, plunging to a painful death in the icy water far below; instead he quickly scrambled back and disappeared from view. A black wave was rearing up from the foot of the berg, displacing floes as it headed their way.

As the ship entered the lee, Hansen issued more orders, all of them mysterious to Findhorn. The Captain pointed. 'There's your route up, laddie.'

Findhorn made out the thin rope ladder, now overhanging the tilting cliff, its base immersed in the churning water. Little hunks of ice and snow were splitting away from the top of the iceberg and crashing into the sea around the ladder. Thundering echoes came from the bergs scattered around. His mouth was parched and he was beginning to feel petrified with terror.

'I'll not move in much closer, some of these beasts have a wide underwater shelf. And I'll not risk more men than necessary. Findhorn, get up there. Do your job, and get yon people down that ladder ASAP.'

Findhorn stood, frozen. 'Quickly man,' Hansen snapped, 'before she turns turtle.' A practical man, our captain, Findhorn thought, not given to expressions of good luck or similar flim-flam.

'Sub-surface ice one thirty metres ahead, captain. It goes way down.'

'Very well. This is as far as I go.' Hansen lifted a telephone and a shudder ran through the ship.

'Can't you take me closer?' Findhorn was looking at the mountainous waves between him and the berg. The ship was plunging like an elevator in free-fall and fear was distorting his voice.

'Mister Findhorn, sir. Don't push your bloody luck. I shouldn't even be here. I'm breaking icebreaker Rule Number One as it is: you can handle any two of fog, storm and ice, but if you have all three you get the hell out of it. I'm not about to tempt fate with Number Two: don't approach an iceberg closer than its height.' Hansen nodded over Findhorn's shoulder: the execution squad, in the form of Leroy, the Jamaican first officer, and Arkin, the red-faced bosun, ice club in hand and looking like a murderer.

'I've seen this happen before,' Hansen said. 'She's about to turn turtle. And when she flips, she'll do it without warning.'

Findhorn, out of words, pulled up his fur cape. A sailor pushed the door open against the wind, and the bridge was suddenly filled with whirling snow. The man grinned as Findhorn passed.

On deck, the roar was overwhelming. A wheel came from overhead, from ice-festooned cables and wires attached to the masts. The snow was like stinging needles. The ship suddenly rolled. Churning black sea rose towards the deck. Findhorn overbalanced, grabbed a thick white handrail. Leroy snatched at his cape, hauled him upright. They clambered along the deck, Arkin leading and rapidly turning into a snowman.

On the lee of the ship, four sailors dressed like Eskimos were gripping the stanchions connected to the motor launch. Two of them were hammering fiercely at thick ice. Arkin climbed in, and Findhorn felt an indeterminate number of hands heaving him into the boat. Then he was gripping its side in terror as it was hoisted up on a derrick and swung out over the sea, the leverage exaggerating the ship's roll. The Zodiac slapped onto the water and Arkin snapped open the quick-release shackles, almost falling into the water as he did.

Down at sea level, the waves were immense. One loomed high over them. It hypnotized Findhorn. He watch its approach, assumed he was about to die. Instead the wave lifted the boat upwards, like a rapidly rising elevator, and threatened to smash it against the iron hull of the icebreaker; but then Arkin quickly puttered the little boat up and over its crest, towards the ice cliff. The berg seemed to have stopped tilting, but neither was it righting itself. This close to the boiling waves, the water seemed greasy. It was covered with a thin layer of frazil ice, and wisps of frost smoke outlined Findhorn's lungs and penetrated his layers of thermal clothing. The spray and snow assaulting his face were painful.

'You wan' try for the rope?' Leroy shouted, his face pitch-black against his white furry cape. Arkin was steering round an ice flow twice the size of the motor boat.

Findhorn looked at the big waves thundering off the face of the berg. The boat would smash itself to pieces if they approached too close. The ice on the cliff looked as hard as steel. Too terrified to speak, he nodded.

The rope ladder was dangling near a large cave. The water inside it was relatively calm. Arkin puttered them towards it. This close, the berg seemed monstrous. It was hissing, as the melting ice released bubbles of ancient air; Findhorn saw them sailing into the open jaws of a living entity. As they entered the cave the sea water began to churn below them, slapping powerfully off the side of the berg and drenching them with icy salt water. Arkin gripped the tiller with both hands. Then the boat was rising upwards.

Leroy shouted: 'Ice platform rising! Clear off!'

There was a terrifying hiss as the rising berg sucked in water and air. The sea churned. Arkin, eyes wide with fear, revved up the engine and swung the tiller. As they raced out from under the overhanging ice the rope ladder scraped alongside and Findhorn, in a moment of pure insanity, leaped at it. He grabbed a wooden rung and swung dizzily back under the overhang. The boat was racing clear. The noise was terrifying. He scrambled upwards, not daring to look down, but then the berg was pulling him up from the maelstrom. Ice showered from above, a fist-sized lump striking him painfully on the shoulder. He scrambled up recklessly, desperate to escape the hissing monster at his feet.

Fifty metres up, gasping for breath, he summoned up the nerve to glance down. Arkin had taken the Zodiac well clear of the berg. Small, pale faces looked up at him. The snow was closing in again and the Norsk Explorer was just a hazy outline. He thought of what he had just done and his whole body began to tremble.

He looked up. The rope ladder ended about twenty metres above him, tied around shiny metal pitons hammered into the ice. Beyond it was a ridge about three feet wide, an old shoreline, and on the ridge was a bearded man. Findhorn, his heart hammering in his chest, climbed up the last few feet of rope. He grabbed the gloved hand tightly and found himself hauled up on to a flat stretch of rough ice, and facing a man with a pinched nose and a worried face adorned by a five-day growth of ice-covered, grey beard. Small hard eyes peered out from behind the snow goggles. Buster Watson: Findhorn knew him from half a dozen international conferences; a pushy little egoist.

'Thank God,' the man shouted into the wind. 'Where the hell have you been, Findhorn?'

'We're lucky to be here at all in this weather. What happened to your radio?'

'We lost nearly everything when the bloody thing calved off.'

You lost the radio but not the huts?

Then Watson was shouting, 'Move it, we have very little time.' Bent almost double against the wind, he led the way across the top of the berg, along a flat plateau about fifty metres wide. Through the driving snow Findhorn glimpsed violently flapping tents and snow-driven huts. A tethered silver balloon was straining horizontally at its leash, rubbing against the ice. They passed a sonar tower whipping in the wind, firing little chirps of sound into the atmosphere overhead. The site looked for all the world like a scientific ice station.

Only the location was crazy.

Now they were passing the charred remains of a hut, a downwind line of soot marking the wind direction at the time of the fire, and the plateau was beginning to slope down. Watson led the way to a rectangular hut about twenty feet long; one of Findhorn's specks of dust. There was a surge of warm air as Watson pulled the door open against the screaming wind. Inside, a generator was throbbing. It was secured to the ice with deep steel pins. There was a smell of diesel. A shiny black cable from the generator was pinned along the ice and disappeared into a shaft about four feet wide.

Watson threw back his fur hood and took off his goggles. 'We started with a steam probe. The hole it made was a guide for a big gopher. It just melted its way down.'

Findhorn stood nervously at the edge of the shaft. Naked lights were spaced at ten metre intervals down its side and there was a long aluminium ladder, converging to a point of light far below. 'How far down does it go?'

'Three hundred feet.'

'What?'

'Yes. Below sea level. You first.'