Read Online Beneath the Ice by Patrick Woodhead - Free Book Online

the steps of the plane, the man’s dark brown eyes stared at him unflinchingly from behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. After a moment’s reflection he grunted, as if he had been anticipating something more. Then he pulled himself to his full height and shook Luca’s hand.
    ‘I am Vladimir Dedov, base commander of GARI,’ he said, crunching Luca’s knuckles in a bear-like paw. He then wagged one finger of his gloved hand beneath Luca’s nose as if about to impart a rare nugget of wisdom. ‘And if
I
like you, you can call me “Poet”.’
    ‘Matthews,’ Luca said, already wondering why someone as important as the base commander was here to collect him. It just wasn’t the Russian way. He’d seen the strict sense of hierarchy before, like some hangover from the Soviet past. The base commander being here meant one of only two things: either somebody deemed Luca very important, or Dedov had lost control of the base.
    The Russian sniffed loudly, wiping his nose with the back of his glove.
    ‘It’s cold out. Let’s go.’
    Motioning for Luca to get on board the tractor parked behind them, Dedov barked a few orders in Russian towards the plane loaders before clambering up into the driver’s seat. They jumped at the sound of his voice, scurrying off without a second’s hesitation.
    ‘Now,’ he said, half turning to Luca, ‘if you are going to work at my base, I want to have a picture of your family and to know where they live.’ He paused, locking his gaze on the newcomer. ‘Just in case,’ he added by way of explanation.
    Luca stared at him, mind racing. The seconds passed in silence before Dedov suddenly grabbed Luca’s shoulder, jostling it roughly.
    ‘I make joke!’ He beamed, his massive frame shaking with hilarity and causing his glasses to slip to the end of his nose. ‘All Westerners think Russians are like gangster.’
    ‘I didn’t . . .’
    ‘But I make joke on this,’ Dedov continued, obviously pleased with himself. As the shaking of his shoulders finally abated, he sniffed the air, nostrils flaring widely.
    ‘Only
some
are gangster,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Since collapse of Soviet times, only men with connections rise to top. They are like fat cream on milk.
They
are the ones that are gangster.’ He spat the words out as if they were leaving an unpleasant taste in his mouth. ‘A long time ago, I chose to come to Antarctica because, in this place, we have no such people. Here, we are free.’
    He lit a cigarette, letting the smoke hang in the air for a moment before inching open the tractor’s window.
    ‘But even here, it is not like Lenin’s dream. Everyone is not equal.’ A smile passed across his face. ‘How do your pigs say? Some are more equal than others!’
    Dedov looked across to Luca for confirmation, but quickly realised that there would be little in the way of small talk.
    ‘So, report says you are big climbing man. Real alpinist,’ he queried, clearly doubting such an accolade. ‘You climbed in Russia?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Nowhere in whole of Russia?’
    ‘It doesn’t have any high mountains,’ Luca replied. ‘I climbed in the old Soviet bloc.’
    ‘Hah! Russia. Soviet. You had your empire. We had ours. But tell me, what mountain?’
    Luca remained silent for a moment, not feeling the need to justify himself by listing his climbing CV. In his prime, he had climbed all over the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, successfully summiting almost all of the most technically challenging routes. However, most people only knew the names of the highest peaks, so he kept it simple.
    ‘I put a new route up Pobeda in the Tien Shan.’
    ‘Pobeda? I heard of this mountain. It is famous in Russia as mighty seven-thousand-metre peak! If you climb it you have title of snow leopard,
da
?’
    Luca nodded vaguely. ‘Something like that.’
    ‘Well, Snow Leopard,’ Dedov intoned, as the glow of his cigarette faded, ‘you have only a few days to get
your
scientists to