Du Bois looked away, chewed her lip.
‘It won’t matter that you’re French or that you’re charming, Martina,’ said Gallen, keeping on the pressure. ‘I worked with these people in the Ghan and they don’t ever laugh. They’ll take one look at you and see someone who values her looks as the core of her very identity, and as soon as—’
‘Okay, okay,’ she spat. ‘I get it.’
Gallen sat in front of her. ‘Here’s the deal. You talk to me informally, and I can vouch for you later. You get cute and I feed you to Aaron, who’s got a Learjet waiting at Kugaaruk.’
Du Bois gulped. ‘I don’t know what I can tell you.’
‘What are they doing down there?’
‘Filming,’ she said, shrugging.
‘The one you call Raffa is actually Ari — former IDF Navy commando and Mossad operator: he’s down there with a nuke. The person you know as Josh is a Mossad lifer: his real name’s Marc and he’s dead.’
She looked at her feet.
‘The third one, the slightly older one,’ said Gallen.
‘Gregor?’ said Du Bois.
‘What was his relationship with Luc and Raffa?’
‘In the background more,’ she said. ‘What can I say?’
‘Well how about this: the two tough guys are Mossad agents who do this sort of thing for a living. What about Gregor? He’s not a sound guy. What do you think he is?’
‘In real life?’
Gallen nodded, flicking his butt through the porthole.
‘Do I get amnesty?’
‘This ain’t CSI Arctic Circle, Martina,’ said Gallen, grabbing her by the shoulders. ‘Focus. What role does Gregor play in this crew?’
She looked away and Gallen felt her relaxing in his hands. ‘Okay, there was one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘Before we went under the water, Gregor was talking to one of the senior guys on the Ariadne and he came back to the others.’
‘He know you were listening?’
‘No,’ said Du Bois. ‘He said to Josh something like, The well heads are not a problem, and The caissons are a good fit. That make any sense?’
‘Letour,’ said Gallen, breaking away from Du Bois. ‘What’s a caisson?’
‘It’s a big circular hole in the ground.’
‘On the bottom?’
‘Yes,’ said Letour. ‘Where else?’
‘How big is it?’
Letour made a face. ‘About thirty feet across, one hundred deep — we build them to house and stabilise the well head. The well bore isn’t anywhere near that size, but the caisson ends up encasing all of the flow-backs and equalisers and emergency valving. On the top of it all sits the BOP.’
‘Which is?’
‘It’s the blow-out preventer. When it malfunctions you get a disaster, like the BP well in the Gulf that blew up in 2010.’
‘Some of the well heads aren’t finished, right?’ said Gallen. ‘So the caisson is open?’
‘To the sea, yeah,’ said Letour, confused. ‘But at the bottom of the caisson — about one hundred feet down — the well is capped. It’s not running yet. Where is this going?’
‘How wide is the power station?’ said Gallen, pulse rising.
Letour’s eyes widened and when he spoke it was dream-like. ‘About twenty-five feet across.’
They stared at each other.
‘I’ll need that last submersible, and someone who knows oil drilling,’ said Gallen.
‘You don’t think…?’ said Letour, then he stopped himself. ‘Oh shit.’
CHAPTER 64
The Fanny Blankes-Koen’s secondary crane swung the submersible to the inside of the starboard hull, having retrieved it from the holds. It was yellow with black markings — like a school bus — and looked old, maybe 1960s.
Pulling on his thermals and padded coveralls, Gallen looked at it and tried to shake loose any phobias. They were going more than a thousand feet down, where there was no light and no escape if things went wrong. It was like going to the moon.
‘What’s that?’ he said to Master Hansen, pointing at the sign on the side of the sub. ‘Sea Otter?’
‘It’s an old design,’ said the Swede. ‘But reliable. It’s good for four hours.’
‘You got nothing modern?’ said Gallen, as the technicians did their checks and beckoned him over to the submersible.
‘The mechanical arm on the front is the latest design from a team at CalTech — about three times stronger and more articulate than the models it surpasses.’
Aaron walked out of the gear room in his padded coveralls. ‘There’s really nothing I can do down there, Gerry,’ said the spook. ‘If it were up to me—’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Gallen. ‘Get in the can.’
Aaron shook his head and took the hand of a technician as he stretched his leg onto the submersible.
‘We got a skipper?’ said Gallen, turning back to Hansen.
The master smiled. ‘I’ll be your chauffeur, sir,’ he said, with a bad Swedish attempt at an English accent.
‘You don’t have to,’ said Gallen. ‘I haven’t been totally honest with you about what’s down there.’
‘There’s a nuclear reactor loose on the Arctic floor,’ said Hansen, his eyebrow rising. ‘You saying there’s more?’
‘Like I said,’ said Gallen, ‘you can sit this one out.’
But Hansen had already taken a technician’s hand and was clambering into the yellow tin can.
The sub was cramped and noisy. After ten minutes of their descent, Hansen at the tiller, Gallen had given up panicking at every groan and graunch that emanated from the machine.
‘It’ll take us about twenty minutes to get down there,’ said Hansen, seeing the looks on the faces of his passengers. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
The ceiling almost touched their heads and their knees came up to their chests. Around them were dials and switches packed tightly, and other than the groans and squeals of the sub, the predominant noise was of the whining electrical motors, the small fans in each corner and the faint hiss of air being released into the coffin-like capsule.
Gallen had once totally freaked out his female neighbour, Daisy Antrim, by locking her in the trunk of his mother’s Impala. He hadn’t known she was badly claustrophobic until he let her out half an hour later and found she’d gnawed at her own forearms with the panic of it all.
He looked around now and saw an environment that would cause Daisy to tear out her own teeth: they were strapped inside a tiny tin can, dropping to the ocean floor through a sea so black that the massive light beams on the front of the vessel were eaten up in the abyss before reaching more than sixty feet. Everything seemed to press in, the water pressure exerting itself on the rivets and welds.
‘So,’ said the Swede, as they descended at a forty-five-degree tilt in a series of downward spirals, ‘you were going to tell me what else is down there, besides a nuclear reactor.’
Gallen caught a look from Aaron. ‘I’m fairly sure the people who hijacked the Ariadne and released the emergency bolts on the reactor are Mossad.’
‘The Israeli spies?’ said Hansen, as if he were asking about flying pigs. ‘Here? In the Arctic? But why?’
Gallen realised how silly it sounded. ‘I can’t tell you why just yet. I know there were three of them — now two: a Mossad officer and someone who I’m assuming is the scientist or the technician.’
‘Nuclear technician,’ said Aaron, as if Hansen hadn’t worked it out.
‘Will they make a bomb?’ said Hansen, wide-eyed. ‘Or just poison the sea?’
Gallen shook his head, craving a smoke. ‘Judging by something Du Bois overheard, I think they’re going to drop the reactor in one of the caissons.’