Yuliya walked over to his desk. “The FSB in general and my boss in particular do not like objections.” Her Russian accent became much more pronounced as she spoke with a certain unease. “They see them as threats.”
Gunter shrugged. “It had to be an outside man. My close associates know me. They know it’s not my character to manipulate the system and unleash a bunch of thugs into a friendly nation so they can ravage it. They know I wouldn’t betray my country and my duty to protect it.”
Yuliya leaned over very close to Gunter’s face. “But that’s exactly what you’re doing, aren’t you? You’re throwing your country into a war. And all because of your love of a woman. What is her name? Hilda? Helga?”
Gunter took in a deep breath and looked away. He put his clenched fists down, away from Yuliya’s face. Punching the smirk off her face would not bring him back his wife Helma. “Fucking Russians,” Gunter mumbled through his teeth.
Chapter Ten
“Damn it, damn it, you evil witch,” Carrie shouted, kicking a snowbank. Their helicopter became airborne, turned into a small black dot, and disappeared behind a heavy gray cloud. “I should have seen it coming, the little bi—” She bit her tongue.
“Don’t worry,” Anna said. “I pressed the beacon’s rescue button before that backstabber took it away. The rescue team should already be on their way.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Carrie drew closer to Anna as if she could not hear her words. “Your distress signal went to Trenton, down in Ontario, more than twelve hundred miles away. By the time the Army gets a team ready and fly ‘em up here, we’ll be frozen solid corpses. Damn you, Alisha!”
“Save your energies,” Justin whispered, as he joined them.
“For what?” Carrie asked and spread her arms with an annoyed shrug. Anna’s head sagged, and she stood silent, staring at Justin’s face.
“She left us here, alive. That was her first mistake,” Justin said. “Her second was not taking away our pickaxes.”
“Oh, great, so we’re gonna dig our own graves, right?” Anna blurted out.
“We found a radio,” Justin continued, unfazed by Anna’s cry of despair. “Maybe there’s another radio that works or that we can make it work. Another flare gun or something else we can use to indicate our position and call in help. Maybe there’s something we can use.”
“Something like what? A chopper? An icebreaker? Look at where we are!” Anna shouted, stretching her arms and completing a slow pirouette. “In the middle of nowhere. No, scratch that. In the middle of frozen nowhere.”
“Enough, OK.” Justin walked over and held her by the arms. “We can give up and die or fight and survive. You take your pick. As for me and Carrie, we’ve already made our choice.”
Carrie slammed into the ice with one of the pickaxes while Justin was still speaking. He turned around and grabbed the shovel.
“Fine,” Anna agreed, but her shaky voice showed her desperation. “What do you want me to do?”
“Carrie and I can handle the digging. See if you can climb that cliff, the tall one.” Justin pointed to their left, where the rocks had formed a steep slope, about fifty feet high. “We need to gather our bearings as to our exact location and find the fastest way out.”
“I remember seeing a small inlet with a broken coastline to the east,” Carrie said in between gasps.
“You think we can walk back to Grise Fiord?” Anna asked, as she headed for the rocky ridge.
“No, absolutely not,” Justin replied without looking up, driving the shovel deep into the snow. “Too far away.”
“So, what exactly am I looking for?” Anna shouted, while searching for a suitable ledge on the rock wall where she could plant her hands.
“You’re looking for water,” Justin replied. “Water that’s not covered by ice floes.”
The rugged surface of the cliff was extremely cold and slippery. The snow had turned into a thick layer of ice, covering the rocks in a wax-like film. Anna pushed her body up by digging shallow holes in the ice layer for her gloved hands and the tips of her boots. Already shivering and experiencing the familiar numbness in her extremities, she avoided pressing against the rocks to keep her clothes dry.
Her progress was slow and, at times, uncertain. Her strength was draining out of her body quite rapidly. Every inch she advanced upwards came at a hefty cost. She was losing precious body heat through the tiny droplets of sweat covering her face and her upper torso. She agonized over the chances of a timely rescue, her judgment when volunteering for such an assignment, and the doom looming over them, as she fought her way to the flat top of the cliff. How long did that take? Was it fifteen, twenty minutes?
Justin and Carrie were still busy, burrowing like moles. They had dug out a few piles of frozen snow and ice chunks, each about four feet high, and had uncovered a couple of large wood panels. They were thicker and wider than the other boards they had already found. Those panels formed the wall structure of the depot, probably. Oh, only if they could find something useful.
She looked to the east, squinting hard to discern anything else but the whitish blinding blanket covering her entire field of vision. A few miles to the southeast, she found a small hill, which was partially uncovered by the snow and the ice. It soared a few hundred feet high. A little further to the east, her eyes found a tiny strip of a dark blue color that surfaced out of nowhere, right at the bottom of the hill.
Anna muffled her screams of joy, unsure of whether she really spotted the water or whether the scene was an optical illusion or a trick of her hopeful imagination. Lifting her goggles for a clearer look and squinting so hard her eyes began to water, she double-checked again.
“Yes,” she shouted, “that’s water, clear water.”
A small section of the ocean, without any deadly icebergs or flimsy ice floes, was only a mile away. OK, I found the water, but how is the water going to help us?
Yuliya nodded at the waiter holding a bottle of Lois Latour Bourgogne Rouge. He filled her crystal glass, and she took a quick sip of the pinot noir. She smiled at the great taste and looked at the shadows cast by the black iron sconces on the restaurant’s red brick walls. The hushed voices of the dining patrons and the large white candles on every table added to the unmistakable ambiance of an ecclesiastic location.
In truth, the seven hundred year-old building used to be the Saint Gertrud Monastery during medieval times. Since 1985, the establishment began serving wine no longer as part of the Eucharist, but a la carte and at extravagant prices. Gradually, the Saint Gertrud Monastery became one of the most luxurious rendezvous in Copenhagen.
Tonight, Yuliya had reserved a table for two in the Confession Room and was awaiting the arrival of her diner date when her cellphone rang.
“Good evening, Ms. Novikov. I’m sorry to bother you, but there have been some negative developments,” Alisha spoke slowly on her satellite phone.
“I thought the whole point of hiring you was to avoid any negative developments,” Yuliya replied.
“I have everything under control,” Alisha broke down her reply by separating and stressing each word. “I’m just updating the Command, as I’ve been instructed, on the most recent situation.”
“I’m listening. Go on and update me.”