Purkiss had boarded the helicopter at Yakutsk Airport, thirty minutes after stepping off the Tupolev charter plane which had carried him and a half-cargo of fellow passengers almost three and a half thousand miles from Moscow. He’d found Moscow itself uncomfortably cold. But he’d never in his life experienced such raw, numbing frozenness as hit him in Yakutsk.
‘Coldest city on earth,’ the official at the gate had reminded him cheerlessly, failing to conceal a sour delight at the foreigner’s discomfort. Purkiss knew Siberia had had an unusually mild winter. Yet the digital display on the wall indicated a current outside temperature of minus forty-two degrees celsius.
Purkiss’s destination was some 280 kilometres — he had to keep reminding himself to think metric — north-west of Yakutsk. There were roads, of a sort, but traversing them would take hours. The Mi-38 helicopter was the quickest, and arguably the safest, bet. And the machine felt solid around him, a modern piece of equipment rather than some clapped-out relic from the Soviet era.
The pilot was pointing again. Purkiss strained against his safety harness to peer through the glass. Some distance away, ten kilometres or more, a cluster of pinpricks winked against the blackness surrounding them. As Grigorsky eased the Mi-38 gently to the right, the pinpricks began to separate, and the dark outlines of a complex of buildings started to define themselves.
Yarkovsky Station.
The buildings were low and broad, the main one only one storey high. The winds that periodically scoured the tundra precluded the use of tall structures. Arc lights came on as the helicopter slowed and descended, flooding the complex in brilliant yellow.
The snow at the perimeter of the complex erupted in dense whorls under the beating of the rotor blades. Purkiss felt the wheels touch hard, frost-baked concrete, the landing as smooth as could be hoped for. A door at the front of the main building was already ajar, huddled human figures visible in the rectangle of light beyond.
Two figures stepped out and loped, stooping, towards the helicopter. Purkiss turned to Grigorsky and yelled over the hammering of the rotor, ‘Thanks.’
The pilot gave him the thumbs up. Purkiss opened the door and dropped from the cockpit, the cold punching him so hard he took a moment to catch his breath. He reached back, dragged two suitcases down, and ducked beneath the sweeping blades, the ground threatening to slip away under his feet despite the deep rubber ridges of his boot soles. One of the figures, its features indeterminate under the layers of hood and scarf, reached Purkiss and took the suitcases from his hands. He didn’t resist.
The second figure hung back, and when Purkiss reached him gestured towards the open door. Purkiss preceded the man, and blinked against the brightness of the room beyond. The door closed, and the sudden muffling of the chopper’s noise was disorientating, as was the heat within.
The man who’d escorted Purkiss inside pulled back his hood, drew off a glove, extended his hand.
‘Mr Farmer. Oleg Medievsky. Welcome to Yarkovsky Station.’
He spoke English with a notable but not thick Russian accent, the typical throaty emphasis on the vowels less pronounced than was often the case. His grip was taut, slightly rough: a labourer’s rather than a scientist’s.
‘John Farmer. A pleasure, Dr Medievsky.’
Medievsky was a big man, almost as tall as Purkiss and far broader, even without his bulky coat. In his late forties, he kept his thin hair cropped close to his scalp, and together with his seamed face rubbed raw by the weather it lent him a faintly thuggish air. But his eyes, the muscles around them permanently tense from squinting against the wind, appraised Purkiss intelligently and without hostility.
The second man, the one who’d taken Purkiss’s luggage, kicked snow from his boots and fumbled off his gloves. Purkiss studied his face, ran through the images in his head, found a match. Ryan Montrose. He looked more the part of the academic: less physical, and the thick-lensed glasses he slipped out of his pocket and onto his face aged him instantly, even though he was still under forty. Purkiss had heard that spectacles would freeze to your face if worn outdoors in this kind of temperature.
Montrose shook hands, sharply and perfunctorily. His eyes slid over Purkiss’s like a magnet veering away from its matching pole. He muttered something that sounded like ‘Montrose’, though it was muffled by the scarf he was taking off.
‘You had a comfortable journey?’ Medievsky held out his hand for Purkiss’s coat, which he slung onto a hook alongside a score of others. The corridor they were in appeared to run the entire length of the front of the building; it was starkly lit and functional, and lined along one wall with boots and a range of extreme-weather gear. The other wall featured a row of unmarked metal doors. Purkiss was reminded of a prison corridor.
‘Pleasant enough,’ said Purkiss, flexing his shoulders, rolling his neck. He looked at his watch. He’d left London fourteen hours earlier, and had crossed eight time zones. During the longest stretch of the journey, that between Moscow and Yakutsk, he’d snatched four hours’ broken sleep. Disorientation and fatigue hadn’t quite set in yet, but they were lurking in the shadows.
Rest wasn’t a priority at the moment.
He said: ‘Dr Medievsky. Just want to establish this from the outset. I’ll stay out of your way as far as possible. I don’t want to disrupt the running of the station in the slightest. Not just out of consideration for you and your team, but because I want to observe as natural a working environment as I’m able. So please don’t feel you need to afford me special treatment, or lay on any out-of-the-ordinary activities for my benefit. I won’t say pretend I’m not here, because of course that’s not possible. But… well.’
Medievsky studied Purkiss, appearing genuinely to reflect on what he’d said. Then he nodded, a faint smile creasing his cheeks.
‘Okay. Thank you, Mr Farmer.’
‘John.’
‘Oleg.’ He swept an arm down the corridor. ‘Come. Let me show you a little of the station, and introduce you to some of the team. Unless you’d prefer to set up in your room first?’
‘No, I’d like to meet them.’
The American, Montrose, followed them in silence. They trudged the length of the corridor, Medievsky tapping the metal doors as he passed them.
‘Storage.’
At the end, the corridor hooked to the left. A woman appeared round the corner just before they reached it. She was carrying a large, transparent plastic box in both arms, and slowed, staring at Purkiss. Early fifties, greying hair scraped back in a pony tail, eyes like pale searchlights in her otherwise placid face.
Dr Patricia Clement, thought Purkiss, a moment before Medievsky said it. Medievsky added: ‘Behavioural psychologist.’
She seemed to be debating whether or not to put down the container she was lugging and shake hands. Purkiss gave a gentle shake of his head. She nodded.
‘Hello.’
Purkiss had known she was American, but in the two vowels he thought he detected a trace of the Deep South. She passed them and opened one of the storage doors behind.
Purkiss glanced down shorter corridors branching off the main one. The lighting was dim, in the interests of economy, he assumed. Voices echoed distantly through the building.
He turned to Montrose at his shoulder. ‘Dr Montrose, your specialist field is botany, is that right?’
Montrose’s eyes were suspicious behind the glasses, as if Purkiss had accused him of something. ‘Yes.’
‘Just making sure I’ve got the professions matched to the right people. Avoids embarrassment later.’