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Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic, 78 degrees North

Monday, 7 March, 1520hrs GMT, 1620hrs local

BLINDINGLY WHITE AND bitterly cold, the landscape around them was utterly devoid of life. Bent half double and hunched against the wind, the three muffled figures trudged in single file through the winter afternoon, their snow goggles flecked with tiny crystals of ice. A thin blue nylon cord, tied around their waists, connected the last two to the one in front, their mittened hands steadying their balance as they placed one foot mechanically in front of the other. The blizzard had taken them by surprise. It had come barrelling down the valley, straight from the polar ice cap, eight hundred miles to the north, obliterating the weak yellow disc of the sun within seconds, then tearing and tugging at their thermal protective clothing. Caught out, far from their base camp at Ny-Ålesund, the three environmental scientists from the UK Arctic Research Station had been forced to abandon their field work for the day and make for the nearest shelter.

The hut was tiny, just a distant, solitary blot at the base of a rocky escarpment, its roof obscured beneath a layer of wind-driven snow. No coil of smoke rose from its chimney, no snowmobile lay parked up outside. It seemed no one was home.

‘Better not be locked!’ Chris Coppinger called to the pair behind him, as they tramped up to the door. But the wind stole his words and swept them away down the valley. Coppinger shrugged. Conversation would have to wait until they were inside. He adjusted the sling of the Mauser 30-06 rifle that hung from his shoulder – mandatory protection against the three thousand carnivorous polar bears that roamed the Svalbard archipelago – and pushed open the door.

The smell hit him the moment he stepped inside. At forty-two, with a PhD in atmospheric chemistry, Coppinger was more than familiar with any number of pollutants harmful to humans and plants. This was not a smell he recognized.

‘Bloody hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is rank. Something’s gone off in here.’ He moved to one side to make room for the others. They stood in the doorway, stamping the snow off their boots and peeling off their goggles and mittens, their eyes adjusting to the gloomy interior. Coppinger hunted through his pockets until he found a torch. In silence he swept the beam across the room methodically, like the scientist he was, from left to right. A stack of wood, an unlit stove, a metal bucket piled high with coal, a wooden chair, toppled over on to the floor. To its right, a large piece of furniture, an old sofa, covered with a blanket, and there was something on it in the corner, a shapeless amorphous mass. And then it moved.

Dr Sheila Mackenzie, the expedition medic, was the first of the three to react.