ANTARCTIC FIRE: A Harry Crook Thriller - Conspiracy in the Antarctic Read online

  Giggles all round their table, I just wished I'd chosen one further away.

  “Reminds my of a bloke I worked with when I was a young roustabout.” Stan launched on one of his own memories, a rare thing, the boys leaned forward to hear what he had to say.

  “I used to work up near the Hunter in a shearing shed owned by a bloke called Dudley Van Snife. Back then the shearers would work for an hour and have a five minute smoko, shear for another hour and smoke a second one, work a third hour and then have a thirty minute break. One old shearer went by the name of Jummy used to roll three cigarettes destined for his three breaks and place them on a board near the chute where he kicked the sheep out once he’d finished fleecing em. He reckoned that he could tell any brand of tobacco just from smoking a few puffs.

  Some of the young fellas thought they would test him out so they made three rollies from sheep dung and replaced the old blokes smokes with theirs while he wasn't looking. The whole shearing shed knew about it and waited with bated breath while the old shearer lit his first smoke of the shift. Well he smoked the whole thing and over the next few hours finished the lot off. None of the blokes could believe it, he took their joke and turned it back on them. Mind you he had to smoke three ounces of sheep shit to do it. Made of tough stuff those old fellas back in the day.”

  My objective at the AB focused on food and a few drinks and enjoying ones own company. Along with a half decent bit of chicken coated in crisp breadcrumbs and crushed Kellogg's corn flakes, a mushroom and garlic gravy, herbed roasted potatoes washed down with a pint of Lionel’s craft beer of the day, a rich heady IPA. The quintessential Friday treat for Harry Crook, retired Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent, now employed in the private investigative industry. Similar unsavoury tasks but carried out on a much leaner budget.

  Amanda the barmaid, Irish, wild but fortunately for me, forgiving. We had a thing a while ago while I recuperated from a nasty work injury, the type of injury only large calibre projectiles can inflict. At first our relationship leant itself to rehabilitation, for both of us. It came to a grinding halt when yours truly found himself distracted by a third party. A few months of awkwardness and slowly normality returned.

  “You polished that off quickly thar Harry, Sabrina get the chicken right for you this particular time?” Slight sarcasm, made me sound pedantic about my chicken.

  “Perfect as usual Amanda, you know I'm easily pleased, can't afford to be too fussy about the quality of my birds.”

  Red flush moved up her face, Amanda’s fiery temper well known by the locals who steered away from disturbing the ants nest, you only had to witness the manifestation once to gain a healthy respect. I wasn't in a placating mood.

  She leaned forward, hip bumping the table, half a pint of quality beverage slopped onto the surface, my wallet wasn't the floating type but seemed to absorb a surprising amount of the liquid.

  “I know you like your meat cooked medium rare Harry,” she hissed, “‘Why’, I asked myself, ‘would a man want his meat not cooked properly, blood running out of it, all manner of wrongs?’ I only now just got it all figured. Medium is who you are Harry Crook and rare are the times you end up with someone of quality.”

  She marched off, dignity intact, as I said, forgiving.

  Bobby Marsh looked over, shook his head, a disapproving father figure.

  “Angels fear to tread there young Harry, but not you, no, always got to poke the bear.”

  I shrugged, what are bears for other than to be poked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I liked Tasmania, the small island state kept much of its colonial feel. Intentional to an extent but also due to lack of Government coffers, not a rich state by any means. Agriculture and tourism were the only successful industries, if you weren't employed in these areas or a Government sector you weren't employed. As a result the state absorbed per capita more than its fair share from the Canberra bucket of welfare. People from the mainland gravitated here, attracted by the environmentalist attitude and alternative lifestyle potential. Cheap real estate, unusual residents, organic potatoes, clean air, what more could a person need, other than an income of course. The island started out as the penal colony within a penal colony. Only the worst offenders were sent to the few prison settlements on the island. Isolated, brutal and corrupt, these cold, wild, primitive institutions rehabilitated hardened criminals, those few that survived.

  Hobart, Tasmania’s capital housed almost half of the islands five hundred thousand population and the only place where you felt there was a sense of purpose. My favourite place on the island by far, a blend of city and rural, restaurants and markets, an old fashioned colonial city with a proud veneer of modernism. Situated in the centre of the city in a cordoned off street, the Salamanca Markets operated every Saturday. A treat for the uninducted tourist, these markets sold the wonderful hand made culinary and artistic delights found only in this southern isolated part of the planet. The vendors equally unusual, a combination of entrepreneurs and hippies, dreadlocked greenies, well dressed erudite businessmen accompanied by the ubiquitous cottage industry profiteers. A bowl of deep fried spicy button mushrooms, presumably non hallucinogenic, a large cup of freshly roasted organic coffee and a bag of myrtus berries that tasted like strawberry-sherbet bubblegum, I was in heaven.

  Just over the road at the waterfront floated Australia's purpose built ice breaker, ‘Aurora Australis’, designed to service the Australian stations within the Antarctic Circle. The entire ship was painted in red which blended in nicely with the rust whilst camouflaging somewhat the many dents and gouges, proud scars from thirty years of battling the most extreme ocean and ice in the world. An old friend of mine, Peter St Clair held the position of Marine Operations Manager for P&O maritime, the company who owned and operated the vessel on behalf of the Australian Antarctic Division. As a favour he arranged a meeting for me with the vessels Master, Captain Mark Levin at One pm this afternoon.

  As I made my way to the wharf, the unusual briefing Smurf provided prior to leaving the mainland passed through my mind.

  “Somethings afoot down south Harris,” Smurf said as we stood side by side looking at the zoomed in image of the Australian Antarctic Davis Station on his large wall LCD screen.

  He asked me to close the door to the office before commencing. That he was prepared to exclude Sally made the hair on the back of my head stand up. Something was certainly afoot.

  “It’s not important which Government department approached us but needless to say, the information I am about the share with you is highly sensitive and internationally significant.” Smurf lead with an ace, unusual.

  “Don’t be coy Charles, I need all the intel, lets not cherry pick.”

  “You shall have it Harris, but we both know certain information needs to be kept out of the field. Certain developments may cause the exposure of embarrassing details.”

  “Certain developments? It's a scientific base located on a barren block of dirt and ice populated by bearded academics! That lot couldn't cause me to reveal my middle name.”

  “Yes, quite, you’re a rock, impregnable fortress, the iron maiden of revealed intelligence,” Smurf said with unusual rancour.

  I realised even as I spoke how insensitive my words were. Years ago Smurf and I both worked for ASIS or the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. He operated as my controller for several missions, saved my life on a couple of occasions. Even before my recruitment, Smurf himself operated in the field, a dangerous occupation especially in those final cold war days. A ruthless KGB division operating illegally in an ex-Soviet bloc country captured him while he was on a covert undercover mission to help prevent the recently freed country from returning to communism. To his credit, even under extreme torture and drug-induced psychosis he held out for two days allowing time for his two CIA colleagues to escape the country. I would have folded within hours.

  The US, UK and Australia put pressure on the right people and they returned him, albeit
a little second hand. He wasn't proud of the ‘betrayal’ as he puts it even though the Americans gave him a medal for what they felt was a heroic effort. As a result Smurf didn't like Russians, and he didn't like me when I said things that inferred I was superior, he had every right to. I had never experienced torture, not too many people have. Those who can add their name to the book of torture victims live with a harrowed look in their eyes, the survivors that is.

  “Fair enough Charles, I deserved that. I don’t need to know.”

  He continued, not a grudge type person, unless you were a Russian, or an extreme Islamic nut-case looking to copulate with seventy two virgins prior to sundown, or you served a 2007 Taylors Shiraz without prior decanting and twenty minutes of breathing. Other than that, he was not a grudge type person.

  “A report came in early this week from the Davis Station, the leadership there are a bit concerned.”

  To Smurf, ‘a bit concerned’ could mean anything from, ‘they’re in a bad mood’, to, ‘they’re suffering from a bad case of PTSD due to an encounter with aliens’.

  “Apparently one of their workers, a station mechanic, disappeared one night during a storm. They eventually located him, or his remains, about two feet beneath the ice of the Southern Ocean, only fifty feet from the shore. The remains were exhumed and a postmortem carried out by the stations doctor. As far as they can tell he somehow spontaneously ignited, there was little left of him and what remained revealed that there were extremely high temperatures involved, far greater than say, an accelerant like petrol or paint thinners. Interestingly their investigation revealed an apparatus in the garage fabricated by the good mechanic and used to distill rum.”

  Nothing untoward so far. I wouldn't mind a photo and some drawings of the apparatus though, you know, evidence.

  “Maybe he wasn't manufacturing rum? Could be something really strong,” I conjectured.

  “The heat required to produce the damage apparently was unlikely to be caused by an external application, the only explanation was that it combusted internally.”

  “Did he drink it? Makes sense.” This purveyor of hooch could be in the rocket fuel business for all I knew.

  “Wouldn’t explain the high temperatures, no known liquid ingested would cause that level of damage. The ignition may have begun externally but continued internally, when you meet the good Doctor, she will explain it to you in more detail. I'm afraid there’s more to it,” he added. There always was. As for meeting the good Doctor, I hope she was back on the mainland.

  “Our clients recently received information suggesting the Antarctic has been utilised for purposes more sinister than scientific climate research.”

  “Old news Charles, us and the Kiwis are probably the only countries that carry out mere science down there.”

  “Quite possibly. But we’re talking more than covert communications or illegal mineral surveys. Both the nearby Russian and Chinese stations, Progress and Zhongshan have been under close scrutiny for a while now. Increased construction, many more personnel, a virtual Armada of supply ships last summer. Both us and the Americans are very curious indeed.”

  “So what are they up to?”

  “Nothing definite, mere suspicions. However, our people at Pine Gap picked up communications a week or so ago between the Russian Progress Station and their masters. The signal referred to one of their scientists going AWOL, a far more desperate situation according to the signal than just a mere recalcitrant academic. Several communications later it was reported that the man in question had been located and that he had suffered total incineration. There was a debate within our intelligence circles regarding the term incineration, it seemed an inappropriate word considering the climate, they thought maybe is was code or Russian slang.

  Later communications contained some more detail which described the demise of the scientist. The tone of the signals seemed to indicate little surprise on the Russians side, even some satisfaction, almost as if they expected the result. When the report of the Davis mechanic reached the right ears here it revealed alarming similarities to that of the Progress scientist.”

  People spontaneously combusting in the Antarctic, a problem indeed, well certainly for the combustor, nice and toasty for those close by though.

  “Should we send them a container load of marshmallows?”

  “Do contribute intelligently Harris,” chastised Smurf. “The mechanics body was flown back to the mainland and they did a more thorough postmortem. Our station Doctor was close to the mark. Indeed the mechanic had combusted on the inside with the temperature increasing throughout the combustion process. Were it not for the ice into which he melted there would have been nothing left of him other than some ash, a proper cremation so to speak.”

  “Is there any connection to the ‘apparatus’ in the garage?”

  “No, completely innocuous, other than an extremely good quality rum with an alcohol content considered unacceptable in those circles.”

  “Surely the Government would carry out their own investigation, sounds serious enough.”

  “They are, as we speak. The client felt a covert parallel investigation might be useful, pick up anything that slips through.”

  “So they already have someone at the Davis Station investigating?”

  “Yes, a Federal Police chap, out in the open, standard bit of detective work.”

  “A suspicious Russian or Chinese operation close by, people converting to mini suns and they send inspector plod?”

  “Not the correct response to an unusual situation, I know. Perhaps they place more importance on our contribution than you imagine.”

  “Bullshit Charles, they have someone else down there, just haven't told you.”

  “You may be right.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Up close the ageing icebreaker revealed its size and age. Towering above the wharf, a hive of activity with the large ships cranes loading supplies, trucks with containers queueing up, a helicopter undergoing maintenance on the helo deck. There was barely a section of the ship's side that wasn't buckled or dented. Built thirty years ago when the Australian shipbuilding industry was still alive and kicking the functional vessel ran around some of the toughest waters on the planet for her entire life. Operating in the southern ocean is not for the faint hearted or for any vessel not built with more than the average amount of steel and strength.

  Able to break through over a metre of ice and handle severe weather conditions she was a proud old girl who had proven her worth many times supplying the Antarctic bases and even the odd rescue of other ships stuck in the ice.

  I stood at the top of the gangway looking for someone to point me in the right direction. Nobody took much notice except one bloke in orange overalls with matching hard hat, I asked him where I might find the captain. He suggested I try the captain's cabin then walked off. Not knowing where that might be I entered a watertight door close by, my senses bombarded by warm air full of aromas unique to old ships. Cooking, hot electrical equipment, old musty timber, old musty seamen, the sound of ventilation and air conditioning, a merging of marine and humans. A red sign with an arrow pointing to an ascending stairwell said ‘Bridge’. I figured the captain of a ship would live close to said bridge and made my way up three flights of stairs emerging into a narrow passageway. More red arrows appeared, amongst others one pointing to the left saying ‘Chief Engineer’ and one to the right, ‘Master’. I knocked on the door frame of the curtained off doorway that displayed a brass sign indicating this was where one would locate the captain. A deep voice, pleasant and friendly, “Come in.”

  Captain Mark Levin, short and round, smooth shaven, late fifties, welcoming face tanned and weathered, wrinkling in its entirety as he smiled his welcome.

  “Ahh, Harry. Yes, Peter said you were on your way, come in, come in. Coffee? Tea? Something stronger perhaps?” A slight wink to suggest this was an old fashioned offer from one old fashioned professional to another. I didn't know whether I was flat
tered or offended, I’m only in my mid forties. Mark served his time in the Royal Australian Navy, as had Peter St Clair. Smurf and I both agreed we should be open with Mark, he understood discretion.

  “Thanks Mark, yes why not, a bit chilly in that breeze,” I replied.

  “Lovely spring day, mind you it's sometimes difficult to tell where winter finishes and spring starts in this part of the world but we take the sun when we can get it.”

  He poured a generous gurgle into each glass with ice.

  His cabin was spacious, lined with oak, mahogany and laminex revealing a bygone era in craftsmanship when naval architects designed ships with personality and which tradesmen built with pride. It comprised a large office and lounge with a living section through another curtained door probably hiding a bedroom and bathroom.

  We sat on the two lounges facing each other and sipped our whisky.

  “A nice ship Mark, built in a different time,” I began.

  “Yeh, don't build them like this anymore,” he reminisced. “Ive done several stints on her over the years but sadly that’s coming to an end. Final few voyages coming up, replacements for me and her.”

  “That's a shame, looks in pretty good nick.”

  “Ahh well, I try to look after myself but I've spent enough time at sea, time to give to the grandkids and all that.”

  “The ship doesn't look too bad either.”

  He smiled and nodded his head, I liked him for it.

  “Decent of you to see me Mark,” I began. “Obviously a busy time for you, preparing for your next trip down south.”

  “My pleasure Harry, all in a days work, good to have a wee break. The most pressing issue for me today is buying my wife a birthday present. Fraught with danger, should be labelled on the marriage chart as ‘warning, shoals ahead’. If I buy her clothes and they make her look like a zeppelin I’ll be in all sorts of trouble or if it looks like she’s just put on the shroud of terrine I’m sunk as well, even shoes are inherently hazardous, can't win you know.”