She was just about to go and interview the men waiting to start the massive pumps further down, which were designed to get rid of the overflow which would be trapped in the anchorage by the forward motion of the iceberg, when a Bell helicopter came thudding in from the west to settle beside Warren’s men. Yves Maille climbed out and Ann was in motion again. Even this early in the day the Frenchman was susceptible to charm. He never stood a chance. The helicopter was soon airborne again and heading back the way it had come.
And that brought the only really bad shock she had in all that magical time: the sight of her dear friend Richard Mariner. She had seen him in a wide range of circumstances and few of them had been pleasant but she had never seen him like this. He was drained, depressed, almost desperate. She could feel the burden of responsibility weighing about him like a cowl of lead. She arrived on Titan quite blithe, looking forward to seeing him, but at once she realised that he was all too close to the state she had been in herself during the last two weeks. Moved by sympathy and empathy, she waded in at once, describing what she had found ashore. Wisely, she did not mention the range of dignitaries waiting to greet him and the abundance of dignities they were preparing to confer upon him. Instead she told him about the millions of desperate people she had seen in the reception camps. She regaled him, not with her adventures, but with the ruination of the land that she had crossed and how the water which he was bringing would restore so much for so many. Little by little as she lingered through the afternoon, she saw the magnesium spark rekindle in the eyes which reminded her so much of circles of sapphire. When Yves bustled up, concerned that the bow of the berg was sweeping into the rush of the southbound current, she surrendered, gave Richard the sort of kiss she normally reserved for Nico Niccolo, and left, pleased with the obvious good she had done. At the door to the lift she was stopped by a tall blonde woman who spoke with an Irish accent. ‘I don’t know how you did it,’ she said, ‘but thanks. Thanks a lot!’
Ann charmed Yves into dropping her back at the city end of the anchorage and picked up a taxi easily. She was back at the hospital within minutes. She went up to her room and into the province of her less than happy doctors. Still fizzing with energy, she reluctantly agreed to remain in their care for another thirty-six hours but refused to remain in hospital for all that time. She had a variety of plans — but they had lingering fears about tick fever.
They met halfway. She spent a quiet evening turning her impressions of the day into prose, pausing every now and then to take a look out of the window, all too vividly aware that the bow of the iceberg was moving ever closer to the outer markers of the harbour. At midnight her resolve broke; she crept out into the streets. The same taxi driver took her right down to the tip of the northern harbour wall, a round trip of a hundred and fifty kilometres and very expensive at that time of night. But worth it.
Why had so few other people, so few so-called reporters, placed themselves here to watch, as a white cliff of ice came sailing into the harbour? There was a gentle, reverberating thunder as the keel a thousand metres below grazed the ridge which separated the tectonic basin from the Gulf of Guinea. The earth trembled — it did not quite shake. Ann knew that her hospital bed would have been disturbed by this same vibration and she would have tossed in her sleep, scared that the roof was coming in upon her. How much more satisfying it was to be out here, watching a wall of ice many times higher than the fabled White Cliffs of Dover which Richard had described and eventually shown to her. How glorious to stand on this balmy, moonlit evening watching history in the making. How simply good it was to be alive!
Twenty-four hours later, Ann stood in her hospital room looking out of her window thinking the same thing, but this time she was not alone. She had described the view from her room to Warren Cord, but he could not be here: he was in charge of the gigantic tractors pulling the unbreakable lines in place of the supertankers Titan and Niobe. She had mentioned it to Indira Dyal and Mohammed Aziz but both of them were in the tight grip of social and political requirements. There was another reception, and this one included the Secretary General. They could not refuse. She had mentioned it also to Emily Karanga and she at least was here. Emily, ever practical, had brought a thermos full of strong black coffee and they stood at the window with fragrant cups of Blue Mountain steaming on the sill in front of them. Further away, seemingly just beyond the double-glazing, the sharp-edged cliff of ice was pushing itself inexorably into the heart of the city. It overhung the inner harbour wall by more than half a kilometre, sloping back through its hundred-metre height. It continued to move forward into place, though its movement was only appreciable if one looked away for ten minutes or so and then looked back.
Side by side, awed by the achievement of the man they both knew and respected so well, they watched as the iceberg slid into place as slowly, as absolutely, as inevitably as the sunrise. They were on the twentieth floor, in the penthouse of the hospital, and so were just able to look down upon the flat surface but only as a child on tiptoe may look across a tabletop. The broad span of the berg threatened to overfill the triangle of the estuary and crush the very buildings aside. But no. At five minutes past midnight, a bass note seemed to sound throughout the city as the bow cut through the red mud of the dry River Mau and ground to a halt against the slope of black, basalt rock. For the first time since the Leonid Brezhnev blew it free of the Greenland glacier that gave it birth, the iceberg had come to rest in a safe haven.
Gleaming in the moonlight, like a picture on a Christmas card, a fine dusting of ice crystals fell forward like snow into the broad cup of the first dry lake. The coffee in the cups upon the windowsill stirred slightly and rippled darkly as the women watched, entranced. The coffee stirred again, in a kind of gentle aftershock, and then there was utter, blissful silence. Ann reached forward impulsively. Unusually for a building in a tropical country, the windows in the hospital had adjustable double-glazing. She took the handles and slid back the inner sheet of glass. Then she loosened the outer casement and opened it wide. The air that flowed in was cold, and smelt of cucumbers.
It gave both of the women who smelt it so much energy that they embraced in uncontrollable excitement.
‘Now,’ said Ann, bubbling over with energy, ‘I want you to take me back to where you found me in that irrigation ditch in the bush. In the morning will do, but you must take me soon. Or, at the very least, you must promise to tell me exactly where it is. I’ve got a bag hidden there with a camera and some pictures which are going to win me the Pulitzer Prize!’
At four o’clock that morning, a tall man in a light trench coat came down the gangplank from Titan onto the dock of Mawanga harbour. There was only the most dilatory immigration check and no customs check at all. Even at this time in the morning, there was a taxi waiting.
‘Where to?’ asked the driver cheerily in English, correctly guessing the most likely nationality of his passenger.
‘To the airport,’ his fare ordered.
‘You’re choosing a bad time to leave,’ the driver said, still cheery.
‘No, there’s a flight at six to Paris and London,’ the fare corrected wearily.
The battered old Mercedes eased itself along the town-bound road. The harbour lights reflected off the side of the iceberg so brightly that it might almost have been day, all the way back to the eastern outskirts of the city and the first reception camp for refugees. There it was still dark, and would stay dark for a while yet.