He feigns a worried look. “Wo… wait, wait a moment… Come on, these aren’t things to be decided like that, on one’s feet… By the way, where are we going now?”
They both laugh.
The girl moves her eyes to the figure sitting in front of her, noticing his focused expression. She leans forward, touching his knee to get his attention and raising her voice in order to be heard. “Are you reading again the notes of that woman?”
The man looks up, as if only now noticing the people and the environment around. He brings two fingers at the root of his nose and takes a deep breath, as if to collect his thoughts. Then he puts on the headphones of the internal communication system. His voice sounds in the ears of the other two, with a slight metallic hue. “Here I am. Yes, this is a copy. Just trying to grasp a sense of her writing. There are several blind spots in the transcription, and I can’t fully understand some passages. I want to make sure to minimize all errors.”
Eva Arsentiev nods, while looking down to the papers in his hands. “We all did our best, Alexander. You can see it yourself… handwriting, made in a hurry, by someone who was slowly freezing, shrunk in the margins of the pages of a Swedish snow cat’s service manual…”
“Norwegian”, he corrects. “Anyway yes, you’re right, I’m sorry”, he vaguely waves his hand. “I didn’t mean that. Your team did a great job. It’s just that this story is… fascinating. Although perhaps this isn’t the most appropriate adjective. See, freezing leads to hallucinations before death, but I don’t think that anyone has ever had the mental clearness and time to write and describe them.”
The younger man, Yuri Dmitriev, intervenes in the discourse. “That’s true, Ivanov, however, it’s also true that something has happened to the site of the Norwegians. It must have been a devastating something to reduce it to the state in which we found it.”
“And the air recognition has not detected any trace of the site where the hypothetical wreck described by the woman should be”, adds the girl.
“It’s been a whole polar winter, Eva. It has probably been covered by the snow. Without better information I fear that it will be almost impossible to find it… Assuming that there is really something to find”, is Ivanov’s reply.
A few moments of silence, then it’s Dmitriev who keeps talking. “Why this inspection to the American outpost?”
Ivanov focuses the eye on both, thoughtfully, as if to consider what to say and what to keep to himself. “During the last winter, Pyotr, our radio operator, caught a message from the American camp. The communication was mostly incomprehensible due to statics and interference, but the voice seemed troubled, and it really looked like a kind of SOS. Then nothing, complete silence. The polar winter and the storms made it impossible to communicate anymore and there was no way to investigate further. To be honest I had not thought of that episode anymore. After the discovery of the woman I remembered it, so, two days ago, I sent Andre and Sergei to take a look at the American base…”
Alexander Ivanov awaits for a while, putting his papers in a folder, aware that the eyes of the two interlocutors are on him. “It’s gone, just like the Norwegian site. We’re going there right now. We have to see what happened. If there is even the slightest possibility that the story of the woman is true, we must hasten to also inspect the remains of the US base, before their rescue team reaches it.”
The heavy helicopter touches the ground, a few dozen meters from the area that, not more than a few months ago, hosted the US research complex. The burned fragment of a small tattered sign still says “…OST # 31”.
The soldiers, bundled up in heavy white suits, haste to come out, bringing bulky backpacks and large bags containing various equipment.
The three scientists move forward, leading the column of armed soldiers into what once was the center of the outpost.
Ivanov stops the group with a wave of his hand, after walking about thirty meters. The men look at the place all around. “It’s obvious that something strange happened, perhaps an accident”, he says, pointing to the many remains of charred wood protruding from the ground. “The site has been burned to ashes and the snowstorms buried and dispersed almost everything that survived the fire.” Then he turns to one of the soldiers next to him, “Comrade Captain Pavlov, begin the inspection of the entire area. Your men should just look for any evidence, without touching anything. Let me know if they find anything strange. Call me immediately if you find corpses, and don’t let anybody approach them.”
The soldiers split up at a court order of the group leader, and they begin the inspection.
“Captain, one more thing: make sure that everyone is always in plain sight, no one must remain isolated.”
Arsentiev and Dmitriev share a questioning look. The boy shrugs then prepares to set up a small camera taken out from his briefcase. A few moments later he begins to film an overview of the site.
Eve Arsentiev’s look, the only woman in the group, is now worried. Instinctively she shrugs, while a shiver runs down her spine. She is the only one to call Ivanov by name. “Alexander, about the writing of that woman… What happened at the Swed… Norwegian camp, do you think it might be connected with this in some way?”
The man slowly shakes his head, unsure. His gaze is away, lost in thoughts. “I don’t know, Eva. I hope not, but I wouldn’t rule out any hypothesis.”
A sharp voice breaks the silence after a while. One of the soldiers shouts from somewhere behind a snowdrift. Others flock, struggling on the soft snow layer, not more than one day old. The scene before their eyes seems grotesque and improbable, as just the sudden and unexpected encounter with death can be.
Two figures emerge from the white ground, half way through. Soldiers equipped with shovels are already working to carefully remove the snow that partly covers them.
The frozen bodies of two men emerge slowly from the white. They’re sitting facing each other, one still clutching a bottle of J&B.
“It seems they are the only visible corpses in the area, sir. We can’t exclude that there are others buried in the snow.” Reports one of the soldiers. Ivanov dismisses them with a nod.
“They stood here, freezing to death…” Eve’s voice sounds full of anguish while viewing the details of one of the two corpses: a white man, bearded, with his face covered by a thin layer of tiny ice crystals, his lips blackened and his eyes half-closed as in the act of focusing a view faded out since many months. His eyes’ expression is that of one concentrated on watching carefully the man sitting across him.
Yuri Dmitriev actually points to the latter, a black man, whose head is partly covered by the hood of his parka. He also has open eyes, pointed at the other man. “That one was armed. There, can you see? It seems a flamethrower… and it’s like he was pointing it at the other.”
Ivanov crouches near the white man, removing the snow and quickly revealing his other hand that was still hidden. A revolver is in plain sight, prominently pointed at the figure who sits in front of him.
“And this one was pointing a gun…”
A few moments of silence go by, with the hum of Dmitriev’s camera and the hiss of the wind. Then Ivanov nods, very slowly, without taking his eyes off the two frozen corpses.
“Two men aiming at each other, until death by frosting occurs. What is the point?”, Eva murmurs.
Ivanov replies, his voice almost a whisper. “The camp was destroyed… they were probably the only survivors, but for some reason they couldn’t trust each other…”