The smells of cooking began to filter down the corridor, and the human noises became louder. Medievsky pushed open a door and they stepped through into brightness and chatter.
‘Mr John Farmer,’ Medievsky announced.
It was a large, square room, a combination of dining room and lounge, with two battered oblong tables at one end near a small kitchenette and an assortment of armchairs and sofas at the other. Four people milled about, two seated, a pair standing at the kitchenette counter. The conversation stopped abruptly as all faces turned towards Purkiss. He felt as though he’d stepped through the doors of a saloon bar in a Western.
‘Hey, man,’ called one of the seated people cheerily, raising a hand. Purkiss took in the thin face and frame, the scrappy beard, the baseball cap with the legend Cincinnati Reds. The picture Purkiss had seen of him was more formal, but he made the match: Efraim Avner.
Avner stayed seated, sprawled comfortably across the sofa, but the others stood up or came over from the kitchenette and dusted down their hands and approached. Purkiss shook in turn as they introduced themselves.
‘Oleksandra Budian.’ Mid-forties, Purkiss guessed. Short, bespectacled, grave-looking, she pronounced her name as though she was imparting a vital piece of intelligence.
The big, fair-haired man was Gunnar Haglund. He was taller even than Purkiss, six-four or — five, and Purkiss had the sense that he had to make a conscious effort to temper the strength of his grip when shaking hands.
‘Engineer, yes?’ said Purkiss. Haglund nodded once.
From the sofa, Avner laughed. ‘He’s more than that. Gunnar keeps this god damn place from falling in on us every time the wind hits.’
The third person who’d risen was older than the rest, past sixty in Purkiss’s estimation. His balding crown surmounted a pouched face with greyly stubbled jowls. He moved stiffly, as though his overweight frame was demanding too much of the joints which supported it.
‘Keys.’ His handshake was fleshy and damp, his accent English.
Douglas Keys, thought Purkiss. The medic. He noticed the glint of the overhead light on the sheen of the man’s brow.
At Purkiss’s shoulder the American, Montrose, said, ‘You want coffee?’
‘That would be great. Thanks.’
Montrose tipped his head toward one of the armchairs. Purkiss didn’t sit until it was clear at least some of the others were going to do the same. But a couple of them, the engineer Haglund and Keys, the doctor, stood gazing down at Purkiss as though he was some strange exhibit.
A few seconds before the silence became awkward, Purkiss said: ‘Dr Medievsky will have told you who I am, but I’ll sum up. I’m a stringer for Reuters, and I’m here to do a series of pieces on Yarkovsky Station and the work you’re conducting here. If it’s acceptable to you, I’d like to interview each one of you at some point about your specific field. I understand that I may also be allowed to accompany you on field trips, to gain first-hand experience of your work. I’m here for four weeks, so there’s no pressure — I’m sure we’ll be able to fit in a mutually convenient time.’ He glanced at Medievsky. ‘And as I’ve said to your leader, I’ll be as unobtrusive as I possibly can. If I’m getting in your way, please say so and I’ll back off.’
Purkiss had used the term leader deliberately. He noticed the reactions, slight but definite, from certain people in the room.
He filed his observations away for later consideration. Because he’d already learned a good deal about the men and women who made up the staff of Yarkovsky Station, far more than he’d gleaned from his reading of the potted biographies Vale had supplied him with.
‘Call you John?’ said Avner.
‘Of course.’
Beneath the peak of the baseball cap, Avner’s eyes strained with suppressed mirth. ‘One big question, John.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why in the hell did you pick February to visit?’
‘Fair point.’ Purkiss spread his hands. ‘It wasn’t entirely my choice, to be honest, but I can see the sense of it. Readers interested in finding out more about a research station in Siberia are going to want to hear about what work is like in conditions of extreme cold. It’ll be a better story this way. Plus, it’ll be interesting to hear from you how the nature of the work you do varies according to the season.’
‘Have you been to Siberia before?’ This was from Oleksandra Budian, the small owlish woman. Her eyes were magnified behind her glasses like an interrogator’s, but her tone was friendly enough.
‘No. Coldest place I’ve ever visited is Calgary, in Canada.’
There was a shift in the atmosphere in the room, almost a relaxing as a silent communication passed between the men and women. He doesn’t know what he’s in for. Purkiss was the intruder whose arrival had threatened to disrupt the unity of the group; now he’d revealed himself as an outsider, and they were whole once more. A family of sorts.
Purkiss sipped the coffee Montrose had brought him. It was black and heavily sugared, almost aggressively so. Purkiss normally took his coffee white and unsweetened. He decided not to make an issue of it.
‘So,’ he said, as he put the mug aside. ‘I’m a novice, someone you’ll find hopelessly naive about the ways to dress and to behave in a climate like this. I’m hoping to learn from you. But I’m not here to be a pain in the backside, and if ever I’m starting to become one, I trust you’ll tell me so.’
Again he sensed an adjustment in the room: in the postures, the demeanours.
Efraim Avner clapped his hands, once. ‘Vodka.’ To Purkiss: ‘You a drinking man?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ said Purkiss.
‘Hell, yeah.’ For the first time the young man stood up. He clicked his fingers manically. ‘Come on, people. We’ve got a guest.’
The engineer, Haglund, ambled over to a panel of wall cupboards and turned with two rows of shot glasses clasped on his fingertips like talons. Avner himself produced a litre bottle of vodka with a flourish, setting it down on the table between the sofas and cracking the cap with relish. He poured in a continuous stream like a clumsy bartender, the clear fluid slopping between the arrayed glasses.
It was Medievsky who raised the toast. ‘Welcome to Yarkovsky Station.’
They knocked back the shots quickly, Medievsky and Montrose and Budian and Avner and Haglund. Purkiss noticed that Keys, the British doctor, hadn’t been poured a glass.
Purkiss himself swigged the vodka, coughed behind his hand, allowed most of it to spray beneath his collar. He’d mastered the art of pretended heavy drinking over an evening while staying completely sober, but this kind of in-the-spotlight downing of shots was more difficult. Nonetheless, the liquor was raw and rough, and it was entirely plausible that as a Western European he might gag upon encountering it for the first time.
‘Whoah,’ he said. ‘The learning curve begins here.’
That earned him a laugh, a genuine and unforced guffaw from most of the people present. Only Montrose, the bespectacled American, looked away, unsmiling, touching the rim of his empty glass to his upper lip.
Purkiss looked at each of them in turn, raised his eyebrows. ‘No na zdorovye?’
A collective wince went up. Avner actually cringed, and glanced across in mock fearfulness at Medievsky. ‘No. Jesus. First of all, that’s not a drinking toast at all. That’s grade-school Russian, man.’
Purkiss knew that. He wanted to convey the impression that his Russian was good but not quite at the standard of a native speaker.
He said, ‘Why else? You said, first of all.’