Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [130]
Schofield dropped down onto the ice – breathing hard, soaking wet, freezing cold. He was gasping for breath, his body overwhelmed with fatigue, and at that moment – with the French submarine destroyed, and himself and Renshaw hopelessly marooned on an iceberg – the only thing in the world that Shane Schofield wanted to do was sleep.
In the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., the NATO conference reconvened.
George Holmes, the US representative, leaned back in his chair as he watched Pierre Dufresne, the head of the French delegation, stand to speak.
‘My fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen,’ Dufresne began, ‘the Republic of France would like to express its total and unconditional support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, this fine organisation of nations that has served the West so well for almost fifty years . . .’
The speech dragged on, extolling the virtues of NATO and France’s undying loyalty to it. George Holmes shook his head. All morning, the French delegation had been calling recesses, stalling the conference, and now, all of a sudden, they were pledging their undying loyalty to the Organisation. It didn’t make sense.
Dufresne finished speaking, sat down. Holmes was about to turn and say something to Phil Munro when suddenly the British delegate to the conference – a well-groomed statesman named Richard Royce – pushed his chair back and stood up.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Royce said, in a very articulate, London accent, ‘if I may beg your indulgence, the British delegation requests a recess.’
At that very same moment, directly across the road from the Capitol Building and the NATO conference, Alison Cameron was entering the atrium of the Library of Congress.
Comprised of three buildings, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. In fact, its goal upon its founding was to be the single largest repository of knowledge in the world. That is what it is.
Which was why Alison was not surprised to learn that the object of her search – the mysterious 1978 ‘Preliminary Survey’ by C.M. Waitzkin – was to be found at the Library of Congress. If any library was going to have it, the Library of Congress would be it.
Alison waited at the Enquiries Desk as one of the library’s attendants went down to the Stack to get the survey for her. The Library of Congress was a closed-stack library, which meant that the staff got the books for you. It was also a non-circulating library, which meant that you were not allowed to take books out of the building.
The attendant was taking a while, so Alison began to browse through another book she had bought on the way to the Library.
She looked at the cover. It read:
THE ICE CRUSADE:
REFLECTIONS ON A YEAR SPENT IN ANTARCTICA
DR. BRIAN HENSLEIGH
Professor of Geophysics, Harvard University
Alison scanned the introduction.
Brian Hensleigh, it appeared, was the head of Harvard University’s Geophysics faculty. He was into ice core research – a study that involved extracting cylindrical ice cores from the continental ice shelves in Antarctica and then examining the air that had been trapped inside those ice cores thousands of years before.
Apparently, so the book said, ice core research could be used to explain global warming, the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer.
In any case, it appeared that for the whole of 1994, this Hensleigh fellow had worked at a remote research station in Antarctica collecting ice core samples.
The name of that research station was Wilkes Ice Station.
And its location: Latitude minus 66.5 degrees, Longitude 115 degrees, 20 minutes and 12 seconds east.
At that moment, the attendant returned and Alison looked up from the book.
‘It’s not there,’ the attendant said, shaking her head.
‘What?’
‘I checked it three times,’ the attendant said. ‘It’s not on the shelf. “Preliminary Survey” by C.M. Waitzkin, 1978. It’s not there.’
Alison frowned. This was unexpected.
The attendant – her name badge said her name was Cindy – shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t understand